Justice in Nuremberg

Victor's Justice. Montgomery Belgion, Henry Regnery Co., 1949.
"Crimes against peace"
Germany invaded Poland Sept 1, 1939
Russia invaded Poland Sept 17, 1939 and occupied half of it. But only Germany was punished.
This was "an affront to the conscience of all those to whom justice is not a mere formal observation of rules of procedure," (M.J. Bonn)
Nuremberg in 1946: "Two parties had committed an act alleged to be a crime, and on the charge of having therefore been criminal one of the two parties was being tried by the other."
The tribunal was styled 'international' but in fact represented the four victorious powers - that is, it was the judiciary of prejudiced parties. "For victors in war can never be accepted as impartial judges." (p. 31) The judgment was worthless because, exactly like 'aggression,' the existence of a need to defend 'special and vital interests' by resort to war is not a matter of fact; it is a matter of opinion. In short the "crimes against peace" charge could not possibly be substantiated; it was illusory.
The Dark Side of the Moon - book about Russian atrocities in Poland (1946)
As early as Feb. 1946 it was estimated that 17 million persons had been evicted from their homes, deported -- but long after this date the deportations continued -- these were the postwar crimes of the Allies - for which the Germans had been judged and found guilty.
International law is based on custom and a sense of decency, and relies on mutual consent.
p. 133: "For one state, or a coalition of states, to seek to enforce observance of some rule... of international law on another state is to discard law and rely on force. And force is foreign to international law so far considered."
Two essential features of international law are the absence of force and the presence of consent.
p. 139: "The net effect of the post-war punishment at the hands of the victor of individuals among the vanquished for war crimes must be to make it seem as if war crimes were legitimate so long as it was the victor who committed them."
Perversion of justice and the principles of British justice -- the heresy hunt replaced the principle that it is better for the guilty to go free than for the innocent to be convicted.
p. 180: "For St. George slew the dragon only to find that it was the dragon's features which confronted him when he beheld his natural face in the glass."
Fatal confusion of force and right
p. 182: "The victors had received the unconditional surrender of the vanquished, and having denied to the vanquished a government of their own, they were themselves, as regards the vanquished, in a relation of government to the governed. But that relation could obviously only hold concerning the current discharge of the national government and administration, whereas the Charter (Aug 8, 1945) and the Trial were concerned with the international conduct of the vanquished. In that domain the legal and moral status [of the victors] was no more than that of a gang of lynchers dealing with a victim..."
p. 184: "Only a super-government or World State could have promulgated the charter and held the Trial-- but such a superstate to exist would have to abolish nationality -- "Unless nationalities were abolished, nothing could make a world government effective... If a world government did have the power to rule the whole world, there could be no limit to its power... This is why all talk of a world state... is pernicious and immoral."
Further: international law cannot suddenly become an international criminal code, and "to a world state empowered to enforce the code, the code would be superfluous." Furthermore, such a state could not be moral - "It is the restriction of power that leads the exercise of power to be moral."
p. 187: "Nuremberg: an undertaking fraught with grave menace for the future of civil manners. It was an attempt to degrade the Law of Nations from a set of moral rules (anchored in customs based on mutual consent) to a criminal code, an attempt, which if it could ever succeed, would abolish the law of nations altogether." [italics mine]
Turning points in the history of Western man: one of them was the setting up of the Inquisition. At the French Revolution the inquisitorial methods were discarded from judicial procedures on the Continent.
p.39: "Those Western victors instituted the Nuremberg Trial in order... to confer on themselves a title to mete out retribution and to levy reparations."
All possibility of committing 'war crimes' ceased for Germany with surrender in May, 1945. But for the victors, on the contrary, that was mainly when the possibility began (except for Russia - when it began earlier). Six of the kinds of war crime named at Nuremberg:
1. Murder, ill treatment or depaortation to slave labor camps of civilians of occupied territories
2. use of concentration camps to destroy opposition
3. murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war
4. killing of hostages
5. plunder
6. destruction of cities, towns, etc., not justified by military necessity
Belgio's book is mainly devoted to showing how the Allies were guilty of all of these crimes, before, but mainly after the cessation of hostilities.
p. 125: "The treatment called 'denazification' to which so many Germans were subjected after the unconditional surrender is the equivalent of the 'persecution of the Jews' by the German National socialists in the twelve years before." It was the wholesale arrest, internment and frequently sentence of former members of the National Socialist Party - carried out by the four occupying powers.
p. 126: "The international military tribunal at Nuremberg did not pronounce, in its Judgment, any of the accused guilty of being responsible for the deaths of German Jews. The Jews who were stated to have been killed were from occupied territories. From Germany under Hitler, most if not all Jews who could afford it were up to the outbreak of war allowed to emigrate."
p. 129: The three men set free by the Tribunal - Dr. Schacht, Baron von Papen, and Hans Fritzsche - were afterwards re-arrested by by the German police under the denazification and had to serve 8 years in a labor camp.
p. 152: "Apologists for the Trial, and for the punishment of so-called 'war criminals' in general, had contended, and were to go on contending, that the holding of the Trial would lead to an extension of the dominion of law. But how could the dominion of law be extended by means of the flouting of a fundamental principle of justice?"
Disregard of the adage -- nullum crimen sine lege -
As regards crimes, the Charter purported to make law for the past. Likewise, when the Tribunal pronounced certain associations to be 'criminal,' it was making law for the past. Dr. Stahmer, leading counsel for the defense, reminded the Tribunal that a person was not to be sentenced to punishment unless he had infringed a law in force at the time of his alleged offense (p. 150)