After Germany’s defeat in WWII, the Nuremberg and later trials were organized primarily for political purposes rather than to dispense impartial justice. Wears War brings to you each week a quote from the many fine men and women who were openly appalled by the trials. All of these people were highly respected and prominent in their field, at least until they spoke out against the trials.
British writer Montgomery Belgion:
The accusation and conviction of former German leaders at Nuremberg of responsibility for ‘crimes against peace’ had a feature so bewildering as to appear incredible. The responsibility of which the former German leaders were accused and convicted included that for the invasion of Poland in September 1939. On this point the words of the international military tribunal, in its Judgement, were as follows:
‘The tribunal is fully satisfied by the evidence that the war initiated by Germany against Poland on the 1st of September 1939 was most plainly an aggressive war.’
Yet on 17 September 1939 Russia too invaded and promptly occupied half of Poland. That is to say, the Russian government had apparently done exactly what the German government had done. But while members of that former German government were in the dock, and were convicted, the Russian government was represented among the prosecutors and the Russian government was represented on the bench. We there had something which, according to Dr. M. J. Bonn,
“has affronted the conscience of all those to whom justice is not a mere formal observation of rules of procedure, especially when those rules have been drafted for a particular purpose.”
Regarding an affront to the conscience of people who still care for justice, Dr. Bonn may have been right, and yet up to the time at which he wrote the conscience of such people had proved singularly inarticulate. But at any rate you will agree that if an ordinary decent man from the moon had landed at Nuremberg in 1946 and had been offered the spectacle of the Trial, he would have concluded that irrationality was master. 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…
Poland was not the only country to be invaded, while at peace with Russia, by the Russian armies. After the invasion of Eastern Poland, there was the invasion of the Baltic States. While the German armies were overrunning France in June 1940, Russian armies were marching into Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Thereupon, from these countries also thousands of men and women considered to be unsympathetic in their politics were deported into the Russian hinterland.
Source: Belgion, Montgomery, Victor’s Justice, Hinsdale, IL: 1949, pp. 22-23, 47.
Full copy of the Montgomery Belgion’s book available here: