Landmark Nazi Trial

Landmark Nazi Trial Is Remembered
By DAVID RISING, Associated Press Writer

[AG: Let me say first that --
Lest we forget how evil people can be on a grand scale we should remember or be reminded of the genocide of the Nazi's before and during WWII.

Mention was also made below that these trials were the catalyst for forming the International Criminal Court. Sadly we, the United States, have not agreed to be associated with that court. You might ask, "Why not?" And, of course the reason is that the leaders of our nation are afraid that they might, by their actions, find themselves as defendants. It seems that our present government feels that it is above the laws and conventions established for universal peace and stability throughout the world.

At first I wondered about this since we as a nation were fighting terrorism on behalf of the world and doing the good thing - and at first, the world lauded our efforts and were willing to join with us.

However, this has taken an ugly turn with the prison camp in Cuba where we keep prisoners without trial or charge indefinitely. An ugly turn with evidence of the torture of prisoners despite our President saying "We don't torture prisoners." An ugly turn when we find that we ship prisoners off to other prisons about the globe where torture is or may be condoned. An ugly turn when we have our top government lawyers telling our leaders that what we do is legal and/or justified.

This has taken an ugly turn when we learn that our government has lied to us consistently to promote their own agendas, be it oil or the lucrative business of rebuilding a nation we destroyed with our own bombs. It has taken an ugly turn when we falsely claim that all of our soldiers sent to that God-forsaken land are willing to give up their lives to save a reluctant and very divided people both civilly and religiously from themselves. Saddam is gone - so what is the problem?

Insurgents or revolutionaries or religious fundamentalists or Shiites or Sunni's or Kurds'? What is the name of the enemy in Iraq? None of them seem to totally agree with how we Americans think they should run their country. Should they be secular? or perhaps fundamentalist Islams (Sunni)? Why not divide them into three countries for each religious sect? The Kurds have wanted that for decades! But, of course, the Sunni minority wants more than just Baghdad which has no oil!

We have been warned that if we were to leave our occupation of Iraq, that they would enter into a civil war. Well, guess what! We are in the very middle of their civil war and we blame some al Caida terrorist for all of the aggression even though it takes more than a "personality" to cause the insurgency.

The people have to be complicit for the effort to be effective against the world's greatest military force, the United States! This reminds me of the French underground during the Nazi occupation of France! The Germans didn't have a chance either. And before that, if my understanding of history is correct, we did a pretty good job on the British during their occupation of what we decided to be ‘our land' before and during our Revolutionary War.

We really do have to rely on history and human behavior cousins, in order to make sense of world affairs. We should have sensed trouble when ALL of the populace didn't turn out with cheers and love for our repatriating forces as they marched through Baghdad - just as the French did as our troops marched through Paris. It just wasn't the same.

Remember the old saying that "Time heels all wounds" as you consider Germany, Japan, Italy, Viet Nam. And also remember the corollary saying that "Time wounds all heels" as you think of those such as Hitler, those psychopaths who followed him, and others yet to be named. ...AG]

NUREMBERG, Germany - American prosecutor Whitney R. Harris gazed at the top Nazis in front of him — men like Hermann Goering, Rudolf Hess, Julius Streicher — as their war crimes trial opened 60 years ago and immediately knew his mission.

Later he would reflect on the significance of the landmark trial at Nuremberg: the establishment of charges like "war crimes" in a new international law and the principle that individuals could be held responsible for their aggression.

On Nov. 20, 1945, the 33-year-old Harris sought justice for the 21 Nazis on trial.

"These were evil men, and what they did was our task to expose, and we did get the evidence and we were able to do so," Harris said.

Harris, now 93, returned Sunday with three witnesses to Courtroom 600 in the Nuremberg Palace of Justice, where the trials were held, to mark the anniversary.

Arno Hamburger, 82, recalled seeing many of the defendants at the Nazis' annual rallies in Nuremberg before he fled the country because he was Jewish.

"It was a very depressing feeling that the people in the dock considered themselves innocent and upright citizens who had only been in secondary positions," said Hamburger, who sat in on some of the trial before joining the court as a simultaneous interpreter for follow-up trials of more than 100 Nazis over the next three years.

When it ended, however, Hamburger said his "feeling was that finally, in spite of all the atrocities, justice won over."

Over 218 trial days, the high-ranking Nazis faced a panel of judges that represented the victorious Allies — the United States, Soviet Union, Britain and France.

The trial established the offenses of crimes against peace, waging a war of aggression, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Its legacy can be seen in the cases under way or being prepared against former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and the leaders of the genocide in Rwanda.

It was also a precursor to today's international system of justice, said Johann-Georg Schaetzler, one of Hess' defense attorneys.

"It set the precedent for the establishment of the international criminal court, which was needed," Schaetzler, 84, told The Associated Press.

Prosecutors were able to rely on the Nazis' own meticulous records for much of their case, as well as hundreds of statements — with witnesses often recounting the greatest horrors with the utmost banality, Harris recalled.

He remembered interrogating Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Hoess for three days, taking a statement that would later be used to prosecute him for war crimes and send him to the gallows.

"Hoess was a very unimpressive individual, he looked like a clerk at a grocery store, he didn't look like a big Nazi or murderer or anything like that, but he was responsive to my questions," Harris said.

"I asked Hoess how many men, women and children did you murder in this camp, and he told me just like this gentleman sitting next to me, 2.5 million ... I said to him, but the conditions were terrible, how many people died of starvation or disease or reasons other than the gas chambers, and he said another half million."

As a young journalist covering the trials for the German DANA news agency, Susanne von Paczensky said she was proud to be one of the few local reporters sending stories about the Nazis' crimes back to the German people.

"The trial was the chance to take those to court who were responsible for everything," said von Paczensky, 82, who is part Jewish and lost relatives in the Holocaust.

On Oct. 1, 1946, Goering — Adolf Hitler's air force chief and a top aide — was sentenced to death along with 11 others, including Streicher, an anti-Jewish propagandist, and Martin Bormann, Hitler's vanished private secretary, who was tried in absentia. Hess, Hitler's deputy, and six others drew long prison sentences and three were acquitted.

Fifteen days later, the condemned men were hanged in the courthouse's adjacent prison. Goering committed suicide by swallowing a poison pill in his cell the night before.