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The Nuremberg Trial: A Legal Analysis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Hans Leonhardt
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Extract

The major war criminals Goering, Hess, von Ribbentrop, and others were sentenced by an international military tribunal in Nuremberg for certain crimes or groups of crimes which had been formulated prior to the trial in a charter signed in August, 1945, by the representatives of the United States, France, Britain, and Russia. In the Charter of the International Military Tribunal adopted in London three major categories of delinquency had been set up dealing with crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Crimes against peace were to consist of acts such as planning, preparing, initiating or waging a war of aggression in violation of international treaties or participating in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of the foregoing. War crimes were to consist of violations of the laws or customs of war and were to include, among others, murder, ill-treatment or deportation to slave labor, ill-treatment of prisoners of war, killing of hostages, and wanton destruction of cities not justified by military necessity. As crimes against humanity were to be considered such acts as exterminations, enslavement, deportation of any civilian population before or during the war or any kind of persecution if the latter had occurred in execution of or in connection with any other crime under the jurisdiction of the tribunal.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 11 , Issue 4 , October 1949 , pp. 449 - 476
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1949

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References

1 International Military Tribunal. Trial of the Major War Criminals, I, 11.Google Scholar

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32 Ibid., 120.

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40 Translated.

41 “Nobody can be punished but in virtue of a law which has been established and promulgated before a crime and which has been legally applied. … And now one wants to renounce this principle in the first penal procedure which will be prosecuted on behalf of the international community of law; one wants to punish what in general is not even taken for a violation of a rule of law; one wants to punish according to a formula so vague and so indefinite that the judge can do with it whatever he wants.” Simons, D., “L'Baradition de l'ex-Empereur d'Allemagne et la Hollande”, Journal du Droit International Prive, XLVI (1919), 954.Google Scholar

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65 Art. 8 of the Déclaration des droits de gens, August 26, 1789: “Nul ne peut être puni qu'en vertue d'une loi établie et promulgée entièrement au delit legalement appli-quée.” In Par. 3 of the Preamble to the Constitution of the 4th Republic special reference is made to the rights and liberties of the Declaration. Art. 8 has been recodified in Art. 4 of the present French Penal Code: “Nulle contravention, nul délit, nul crime ne peuvent êetre punis de peines qui n'étaient pas prononcées par la'loĩ avant qu'ils fussent commis.”

66 Art. 1, Sec. 9, par. 3: “No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto law shall be passed.”

67 Par. 2 of the Reich Criminal Code of May 15, 1871, provides: Eine Handlung cann nur dann mit einer Strafe belegt werden, wenn diese Tat gesetzlich bestimmt war, bevor die Handlung begangen wurde.” This paragraph was later inserted as Art. 116 into the “Grundrechte und Grundpflichten der Reichsverfassung.”

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76 “Nach dem Grundgedanken eines Strafgesetzes und nach gesundem Volksemp-finden.

77 The present writer drafted this petition. For the full text see: League of Nations Official Journal, XVI (1935), II, 1336–1337.Google Scholar

78 Permanent Court of International Justice, Ser. A/B, N. 65, 56–57.

79 Ex Quirin, Parte (1942, 317, U.S. 1), reprinted in American Journal of International Law. XXXVII (1943), 152 ff.Google Scholar

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81 Case of the German Saboteurs, American Journal of International Law, XXXVII (1943), 160.Google Scholar

82 Ibid.

83 Ibid., 161.

84 The Supreme Court specifically referred to the common law interpretation of the law of war.

85 Cf. Manner, , loc. cit., 415Google Scholar and Hyde, Charles Cheney, “Aspects of the Saboteur Cases” (editorial), American Journal of International Law, XXXVII (1943), 88–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For a different viewpoint see Glueck, Sheldon, “Tribunal for War Offenders,” Harvard Law Review, LVI (1942–1932), 1069–1072.Google Scholar

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99 Cf. Deutsche Justk, XCVII, II (1935), 1108.Google Scholar

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102 Forgery of Hindenburg's will.

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108 Entscheidung des Reichsgerichts in Straffsachen, July 16, 1921,Google Scholar “Versus Dithmar and Boldt”; English version; Annual Digest of Public International Law Cases, 1923–1924, N. 231; quotation here from translation in Briggs, , op. cit., 772.Google Scholar

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113 Cf. “Die 43. Tagung des “institut de Droit International” Bruxelles, 27. Juli bis 3, August 1948”, Die Friedenswarte (Geneva), XLVIII, 234.Google Scholar See also Art. 1 of the recent Convention on Genocide which provides only for the national punishment of the newly created international crime. For the text of the Convention see United Nations Bulletin, V, N. 12 (12 15, 1948), 1012–1015.Google Scholar

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