https://www.theatlantic.com/magazin e/archive/1946/04/nuremb

>>3158064
>Do you believe that the Nuremberg trials were, judicially, a farce?
No. Nazi crimes were extraordinary and they required extraordinary trial.

>>3158091
What do you mean by 'extraordinary trial'? Does it still constitute the values of what is considered just by the law?

>>3158132
Yes.

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>>3158064

Would you rather they have been systematically executed without trial as was originally proposed instead?

If they were judicially a farce, why were several people tried and acquitted? It wasn't just a show trial, the results were binding.

If anything, the Nuremberg trials set the precedent for international prosecution of people who are accused of committing the most heinous crimes against humanity.

>>3158153
If you take a glance at the article you can see some arguments as to why the trials could be considered both unjust and harmful in some respects.

Dealing with the men who had committed horrific crimes in an executive matter would have been cut and dry, but to enact retroactive law sours it some. As Wyzanski puts it, 'Most reporters say that the Germans are neither interested in nor persuaded by these proceedings, which they regard as partisan'.

>>3158176
There was certainly an element of judicial procedure in the trials, but the main point being made here is that it was interfered with. If a trial was to take place then it should have been watertight and above criticism.

>>3158187
Adding to the above, I've noted in the OP that for the last 15 years the International Criminal Court has done away with retroactive law. Presumably, this was done in the name of more just proceedings. Was retroactive law not an absolutely primary element of the Nuremberg trials?

>>3158205
>Adding to the above, I've noted in the OP that for the last 15 years the International Criminal Court has done away with retroactive law. Presumably, this was done in the name of more just proceedings. Was retroactive law not an absolutely primary element of the Nuremberg trials?

I don't think the international community had been in a spot similar to this before. They'd never had the chance to catch tons of people who were involved in the commission of ridiculously heinous crimes and how to even prosecute those. I'm really not shedding any tears over what rights were infringed on, they were lucky to get this in my opinion. The systematic murder of millions pretty much speaks for itself as a crime.

>>3158213
I would refer you to the Digby quote and how that reflects upon your statement.

>>3158205
I think it's impossible to deny that the trials were partly partisan. That's to be expected after war.
To the extent it was is open for debate.

>>3158224
I really don't care what some moralizing 17th century "Lord" thinks about the issue.

It was either a trial for crimes that "didn't exist" (when the crime itself, murder, is self-evident) or they are just executed. I prefer the ex-post facto trial over that.

In history we have to understand context. The reason the ICC did away with retroactive law is because we have the hindsight of making our justice system fair. We didn't have that, and we had to do something about the thousands of high-level German (among others) officials who either needed to be tried, jailed permanently, or executed.

Stalling the process would have violated their rights further to a speedy trial. I would ask you: what would you have done here?

>>3158064
how often do show trials go on for 288 days?

>>3158064

The wholesale slaughter of civilians - both your own and in countries you have occupied - is such a repugnant offence that failing to prosecute it would fly in the face of natural law.

From a legal perspective, you could have achieved what the Nuremburg trial achieved by prosecuting the Nazis under German law and disregarding any laws that excused their heinous conduct on the grounds that those laws contravened the basic tenets of humanity, justice, and what we term natural law. There are examples of the Supreme Court and the European Court of Human Rights ignoring shitty domestic laws on similar grounds.

The fact that they chose to invent a new category of crime within international law was legally inelegant; trampling as it did a number of basic judicial principles.

I understand why they did it and I understand why the court let it stand. And I'm certainly not unhappy with the outcome of the trial re Nazi scum.

But you're right that ex post facto laws are absolute cancer and it does tarnish - from a procedural standpoint - an incredibly important trial.

>>3158237
The character of the person behind the quote doesn't have much bearing on this issue. The content of the statement (what should be done vs what is just under the law) still bears relevance.

The argument of 'we have the hindsight of making our justice system fair.' doesn't apply here. Proper judicial procedure and arguments against post ex facto law have existed for over a millennia prior to the trials.

What someone else would have done here doesn't matter, we're critiquing the path that was taken. As
>>3158230
states, there was an undeniably partisan nature to the trials. If a trial is convened then it should in no way contravene what is legally just. As Wyzanski points out, "It confesses itself to be not legal justice but political" due to executive interference.

I'd just like to applaud /his/ that we've had a Nazi-related thread up for almost two hours without a single shitpost

>>3158272

Good post.

>>3158272
>There are examples of the Supreme Court and the European Court of Human Rights ignoring shitty domestic laws on similar grounds.

Like what?

>>3158417
To quote from Heinrich Rommen's "Natural Law in Decisions of the Federal Supreme Court and of the Constitutional Courts in Germany", page 6 paragraph 3
------
Meanwhile, lower courts since 1945 were referring to natural law in their
decisions. Thus, the Wiesbaden Amtsgericht and the Frankfurt Landgericht
decided that laws which declared the property of Jews forfeited to the Reich
(Reichsleistungsgesetz, 1937) were in violation of the natural law and therefore
void ab initio, a doctrine which the Federal Supreme Court affirmed with
respect to deprivation of liberty.'
------

You can view this source further here:
http://scholarship.law.nd.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1036&context=nd_naturallaw_forum

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>>3158176
Clearly Jews are not unbiased parties and should not have been involved in the trial.

>>3158091
Nah the nazi leadership and warcrime perpetrators should have been shot the moment the allies found them.
>>3158176
Yes.

>>3158064
>>Do you believe that the Nuremberg trials were, judicially, a farce?

Of course, Soviets were judges there and not accused.

>>3158526
They threw out a lot of Jewish revenge myths for lack of evidence, if they had really wanted to nail the regime to the wall the skin lamps and electric swimming pool would have been fact and not an urban legend that still persists for some reason

>>3158064
I haven't studied the trials particularly so it's not like I know if they did it this way but it was right to have a trial to specify their crimes and allow them to make a defense. however it should still be an entirely political/military matter, not judicial.

>>3158064
Of course they were a farce. The entirety of German treatment post-World War II was built on British offense at the audacity of the Germans to actually want to be considered major players on the world stage and not just Britain's good little counterbalance to the real big boys of France and Russia.

>>3160386
That's interesting, is there a source somewhere about throwing out the Jewish evidence? Or has it already been shared in this thread?

>>3160930
It's even on Wikipedia, which really makes you winder why it has persisted for 70 years
>There was absolutely no evidence in the trial transcript, other than she was a rather loathsome creature, that would support the death sentence. I suppose I received more abuse for that than for anything else I did in Germany. Some reporter had called her the "Bitch of Buchenwald", had written that she had lamp shades made of human skin in her house. And that was introduced in court, where it was absolutely proven that the lamp shades were made out of goat skin.[4]

>>3160945
So that means in a sense most arguments regards to "absurd tales" from Jews has already been negated and people are in general just arguing over nothing when "lampshades" and "soap" and whatnot are mentioned?
Seems kinda bizarre how it has persisted tbqh

>>3160954
Yeah, anything more ridiculous than getting gassed or dying of typhus and starvation is probably bullshit, I see them the same as fake Vietnam veterans. A poor and desperate attempt to cling onto a cultural phenomena they didn't get to be part of

>>3160399
>it was right to have a trial
>should still be ... not judicial

What did he mean by this?

>>3160954
It persisted because Holocaust deniers perpetuated the idea that these claims were an INTEGRAL part of the "Holohoax" in order to make the factual claims of the Holocaust look less reliable.

People trying to claim that prosecuting someone for murder is an ex post facto violation run into a paradox.

Either murder is universally, categorically wrong, in which case any person who commits it can be held criminally liable, or it isn't, in which case any person can hold a trial and kill anybody for any reason without any sort of legal or moral issue.

Either way, it's always funny to see the schoolyard bully cry like a little girl when the teacher shows up with a paddle.

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>>3158205
>'Most reporters say that the Germans are neither interested in nor persuaded by these proceedings, which they regard as partisan'.

It wasn't done for the benefit of Germans.

>>3162143
You should not use the judiciary for when a law has not been broken. See the quote in the OP. Ex post facto laws are cancer.

>>3162144

>It wasn't done for the benefit of Germans.

Actually it was, because it gave the accused at least a chance to make their case for leniency, which the smarter among them, namely Donitz and Speer, directly benefited from. The alternative would have been to just shoot them all.

>>3162143
just shooting them without ceremony would have been better than what they did, yes

of course, the better idea would be to recognize that retributive "justice" is cancer and not kill them in the first place

>>3162157
>you should not use the judiciary for when a law has not been broken

Why?

Is there a law against it?

I don't see a law.

>>3162193
Alright so you're just being facetious, very funny

>>3162190

>just shooting them without ceremony would have been better than what they did, yes

I'm sure that Donitz and Speer would both have sharply disagreed with that statement.

>>3162198
I'm not being facetious, I am attempting to refute the central point of your argument.

Either there's universal morality, or there isn't, and either way there is no good reason not to shoot Nazis.

Also, a bunch of the things the Nazis did were explicit violations of the Geneva Convention, but that's a much less semantic, pointless argument to make so I've been avoiding it.

>>3162213
The judiciary applies the law and that's all there is to it. If you want to shoot nazis just because 'it's right' then don't pretend it's a judicial matter.

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Why was there no Nuremburg trial for the Japanese? Their empire killed 10 million civilians from 1937 to 1945. They had the Death Railway, Unit 731, etc. Just as bad if not worse than the Nazis.

>>3162271
We Americans are sensible, merciful people whereas brits, ruskies, and frogs aren't

>>3162271
>>3162276
Ahem

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Military_Tribunal_for_the_Far_East

>>3162281
Oops lol

>>3162261

>then don't pretend it's a judicial matter.

But it was. Defendants were in fact given a chance to argue their case, and at least two of them did get off with lighter sentences because of this.

>>3162161
>>It wasn't done for the benefit of Germans.
>Actually it was

No, Nuremberg was done for the benefit of the victorious Allied populations.

>>3162341
>Nazi German leaders were given the chance to defend themselves (in part) instead of being executed, for the benefit for the Allied populations

What did he mean by this?

>>3162276
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomoyuki_Yamashita

yep, sure

>>3163967
A command is responsible for his troops

>>3162113
retard

>>3164041
So you're saying it should have been a political or military trial without any kind of judiciary?

Could you give an example?

>>3164028
So every time an American soldier has committed a war crime the general in command is put on trial?

>>3164103
"when vengeful actions are widespread offenses and there is no effective attempt by a commander to discover and control the criminal acts, such a commander may be held responsible, even criminally liable". If that or something has occurred then I imagine the generals would be liable.

Whether the general is put on trial is a completely different matter. We're discussing liability and what the law actually states, not how well the law has been enforced.

>Do you believe that the Nuremberg trials were, judicially, a farce?

Yes. They only killed an insignificant percentage of the NAZIs. They should have wiped them off the face of the earth. All of them.

>>3162271

The Americans betrayed the Allies. The Allies wanted revenge, but the Americans had a cunning plan. They instead helped Japan and Germany back on their feet with the intent of controlling them through a shadow government.

However that plan mostly failed.

But none the less this allowed the war criminals to escape justice.

>>3164051
the post was only two sentences yet apparently you missed half of it.

>>3158176
I mean that effectively happened anyway.

>>3158064
>farce

>>3164182
Well done on your post