Triumph of justice over revenge

In the Nuremberg Trials of 1945, the leading Nazis were accused of war crimes, and 12 of them were sentenced to death. But what was the legal position about wartime atrocities? The Geneva Convention had laid down rules of war: for example, that prisoners of war should be treated with decency. Germany broke this rule flagrantly, even using prisoners of war for scientific experiments in which the victims were slowly tortured to death.

Yet the worst atrocity perpetrated by the Germans, the extermination of the Jews, played no part in the war effort, and indeed hindered it by taking up vital resources. The German fantasy, stemming from Hitler, that the Jews were the main war enemy, using the Allies as their agents, could hardly categorise the persecution of the Jews as a war crime. Moreover, under Nazi German law, the persecution of the Jews was perfectly legal.

Thus, many of the charges against the German leaders, while substantial enough, were hard to pin down as war crimes. Because of such doubts, some of the Allied leaders were against the whole idea of a war-crimes trial. Winston Churchill wanted the Nazi leaders to be shot out of hand, without trial, as outlaws who had put themselves beyond the reach of legal judgment. Stalin, on the other hand, did want trials, but conducted on the model of Soviet show-trials, with only a pretence of presentation of evidence. Only the Americans wanted a real trial, with a properly constituted defence and a possibility of acquittal.

It was the Americans who won the day, and the Nuremberg Trials were the result. In the event, they richly justified the American determination to apply standards of morality and legality to the enormities perpetrated by the Nazis. But to accomplish this, some new legal concepts had to be created while the trials were actually being conducted; and this gave room to the acerbic and unrepentant Goering to comment that the trials simply represented the revenge of the victors over the conquered.

Richard Overy's book, based on the authentic records of the interrogation of the accused, both before and during the trial, shows how the American conception was carried out, and is an invaluable guide to a unique occasion in the history of human justice. His long introduction provides an excellent survey of the aims of the trials and the reactions of the accused, while the documents which form the main body of the book are of crucial importance for any assessment.

The crimes indicted were of three kinds: political crimes, such as the blatant breaking of treaties and unprovoked invasion of neutral countries; war crimes in the strict sense, such as the mistreatment of prisoners; and crimes against humanity, such as the sadistic persecution of Jews, gipsies and homosexuals.

Overy shows that the main perpetrators attempted to avoid all responsibility or even knowledge of the crimes committed. Ribbentrop, for example, pretended to know nothing. Even Goering, who alone accepted the political charges (with brutal indifference), pleaded unawareness of the crimes against humanity. It was from the second-order perpetrators that the frankest admissions came. Rudolf Hoess, for example, commandant of Auschwitz, gave a detailed account of the daily quota of murders. His evidence alone is sufficient to refute the Holocaust deniers. Yet he gave his evidence without emotion; he was cool and horrifyingly frank because he thought it so obvious that he could not be blamed for obeying orders. He was one of those who were hanged.

Missing from the dock were Hitler himself, Himmler and Goebbels, who had killed themselves. Eichmann escaped, but later came to trial in Israel, where he too was coolly frank about his crimes. The hypnotic power of Hitler over all his associates is evidenced in all the interrogations.

Very interesting is the evidence of Albert Speer, who was able to distance himself plausibly from the worst atrocities. He escaped the death penalty.

Overy, however, remains unconvinced of his sincerity. Speer was Hitler's most efficient minister, but at the end, he opposed the mad "scorched earth" policy.

At the present time of renewed terror, it is salutary to be reminded by this book of the evil potentialities of fanaticism.