Droga do Norymbergi. Geneza sądowych rozliczeń ze zbrodniami III Rzeszy

Paweł Machcewicz

Vol. 25 No. 1 (2015)

ISSN:

1427-7476

Section: Eseje

The Road to Nuremberg. The Genesis of Judiciary Settling Accounts with Crimes of the Third Reich

Paweł Machcewicz

Remembrance and Justice, Vol. 25 No. 1 (2015), pages: 79-111

Publication date: 2015-06-30

PDF (Język Polski)

Abstract

The Road to Nuremberg. The Genesis of Judiciary Settling Accounts with Crimes of the Third Reich The first reported court trials for war crimes concerned offenses committed during the American Civil War (1861–1865). After World War I, the victorious nations of the Entente attempted to put the former German Emperor Wilhelm II and other German military leaders responsible for particularly drastic crimes. The former ruler took refuge in the Netherlands, which refused to extradite him, and the Reich Tribunal in Leipzig held a number of trials under heavy pressure from the victorious coalition. The majority of them led to acquittals or exceptionally short sentences, which resulted in the Leipzig process being labelled a travesty of justice; during World War II the allies regarded it as a negative experience which they should avoid repeating at all costs. During the period 1919–1920 several dozen trials concerning the slaughter of Armenians were held in Turkey by Turkish and British authorities, but they were equally inadequate for the scale of the crimes committed involving the murder of almost a million people. The anti-Hitler coalition thus could not draw on any real examples from the past when seeking to account for the crimes of the Third Reich and its allies, nor were there any international legal regulations or institutional solutions that they could look to. The first action taken to document the crimes committed in occupied countries were undertaken by governments-in-exile in London, primarily that of the Republic of Poland. It was pressure from that as well as other governments as well as others which led to the formation of the War Crimes Commission in October 1943, which developed a new legal concept and category: crimes against humanity. It turned out to be key in enforcing liability for crimes against civilians; it was invoked during the Nuremberg trials, and is also applied in many contemporary criminal proceedings. The first joint Allied commitment to prosecuting war crimes was the Moscow Declaration of 1 November 1943, but even after its adoption there were serious disagreements among the allies as to how this should be done. Winston Churchill, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, was opposed to the creation of an international tribunal, citing the different legal systems of the Allies and the fiasco of the Leipzig trials following World War I; he was a supporter of summarily executing the leaders of the Third Reich and fascist Italy. The legal framework of the post-war trials was only developed during the closing months of the war, with American politicians and lawyers playing a key role. Their contribution was to base the most important post-war trials on three pillars: the categories of crimes against humanity, crimes against peace and the charge of conspiracy to commit crimes (a direct transplant from the American legal system). The trials held before the International Military Tribunal, held in Nuremberg from 20 November to 1 October 1946, were an attempt, unprecedented in the history of civilization, by the international community to bring to justice the leaders of a defeated state to justice for their crimes. In spite of the numerous criticism levelled against various aspects of the Nuremberg trials, it ultimately became a point of reference and an example for later attempts at placing political and military leaders on trial for their crimes.

Keywords

zbrodnie • III Rzesza • alianci • procesy • Norymberga • Międzynarodowy Trybunał Wojskowy crimes • Third Reich • Allies • trials • Nuremberg • International Military Tribunal

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Citation rules

Machcewicz, P. (2015). The Road to Nuremberg. The Genesis of Judiciary Settling Accounts with Crimes of the Third Reich. Remembrance and Justice, 25(1), 79–111. Retrieved from https://czasopisma.ipn.gov.pl/index.php/pis/article/view/229

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