1 - Allied Justice and Its Discontents

Summary

This chapter outlines Allied efforts at justice for Nazi crimes. It describes how the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg prioritized the prosecution of aggressive war and rendered Nazi atrocities secondary. The chapter then analyzes how subsequent American trials at Nuremberg did focus on Nazi atrocities, but how the defense attorneys successfully shaped the German public perception of the trials, so that they largely failed in their liberalizing pedagogy. The chapter also evaluates the national trial programs conducted by the Americans, British, French, and Soviets for “ordinary” German war crimes. It argues that these trials received only modest public attention, in comparison to the Nuremberg trials, and that, because these trials were focused overwhelmingly on crimes against Allied nationals, they had very limited impact on German political culture. Overall, the chapter concludes that the Allied trials did not have the kind of democratizing impact suggested by transitional justice theory.