break of war (Count Four), but after argument the Tribunal dismissed this count as outside its competence, on grounds generally parallel to those relied upon by the IMT in the same connection. All of the defendants were accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed against civilian populations after the outbreak of war, including the persecution and extermination of racial and religious groups (Count Five), plunder and spoliation of property in occupied countries (Count Six), and deportation to forced labor (Count Seven). Most of the defendants were also members of the SS or the Leadership Corps of the Nazi Party and were charged accordingly (Count Eight). The court proceedings ended in November 1948, but the Tribunal took five months to prepare its judgment, which is correspondingly lengthy and meticulous.228 Two of the defendants229 were acquitted of all charges and one was found guilty only of membership in the SS and the Nazi Party Leadership Corps.230 The others were all convicted on one or more counts involving crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.

Much attention had been focussed during the trial on the fate of von Weizsaecker, who was a personable and educated diplomat with numerous prominent friends in several European countries. The evidence concerning his activities as Ribbentrop's deputy was weighed by the Tribunal with the utmost care, and von Weizsaecker was acquitted on numerous charges. However, the Tribunal found him guilty of participating in the unlawful invasion and occupation of Bohemia and Moravia in March 1939, and of complicity in the deportation of Jews from several European countries to enslavement and extermination in concentration camps such as Auschwitz. The conviction of von

228 The judgment is 833 pages in length.

229 Otto Meissner (Chief of the Presidential Chancellery) and Otto von Erdmannsdorff (a Foreign Office official).

230 Ernst Bohle (Chief of the Foreign Department of the Nazi Party). Bohle had pleaded guilty to the charge of membership in the SS with knowledge of its criminal activities; this was the only plea of guilty ever entered in any of the Nuremberg trials.

Weizsaecker and four other defendants (Keppler and Woermann of the Foreign Office, Lammers, and Koerner) on the charge of committing "crimes against peace" was certainly the most noteworthy feature of the judgment. These convictions were all well within the principles laid down by the IMT, but, coming as they did two and a half years later and in a vastly altered international climate, they aroused widespread attention. In addition to relying upon the IMT judgment as a precedent, the Tribunal observed:

No one would question the right of any country to use its armed forces to halt the violator in his tracks and to rescue the country attacked. Nor would there be any question but that, when this was successfully accomplished, sanctions could be applied to the individuals by whose decisions, cooperation and implementation the unlawful war or invasion was initiated and waged. Must the punishment always fall on those who were not personally responsible? May the humble citizen, who knew nothing of the reasons for his country's action, who may have been utterly deceived by its propaganda, be subject to death or wounds in battle, held as a prisoner of war, see his home destroyed by artillery or from the air, be compelled to see his wife and family suffer privations and hardships; may the owners and workers in industry see it destroyed, their merchant fleets sunk, the mariners drowned or interned; may indemnities result which must be derived from the taxes paid by the ignorant and the innocent; may all this occur and those who were actually responsible escape?

The only rationale which would sustain the concept that the responsible shall escape while the innocent public suffers, is a result of the old theory that "the King can do no wrong" and that "war is the sport of Kings."231

The Tribunal made it clear that these principles are not applicable to Germans alone, but are universally binding:

We may not, in justice, apply to these defendants because they are Germans, standards of duty and responsibility which are not equally applicable to the officials of the Allied Powers and to those of all nations. Nor should Germans be convicted for acts or conduct which,

231 Judgment, pp. 14-15.

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if committed by Americans, British, French or Russians would not subject them to legal trial and conviction.232

Furthermore, the Tribunal took pains to confine its judgment on the question of "crimes against peace" within the traditional limits of criminal law; no defendant was convicted on this ground merely because of his position or because of his pursuit of the normal functions of a diplomat or a civil servant. In this connection the Tribunal stated:

Obviously, no man may be condemned for fighting in what he believes is the defense of his native land, even though his belief be mistaken. Nor can he be expected to undertake an independent investigation to determine whether or not the cause for which he fights is the result of an aggressive act of his own government. One can be guilty only where knowledge of aggression in fact exists, and it is not sufficient that he have suspicions that the war is aggressive. Any other test of guilt would involve a standard of conduct both impracticable and unjust.233

The bulk of the Tribunal's opinion was devoted to a careful analysis of the evidence bearing on each defendant with respect to the charges brought against him, and there is no need here to rehearse these individual judgments in detail. Considering the gravity of the offenses for which the defendants were convicted, the sentences are perhaps somewhat lenient. Lammers, who was found guilty under five counts of the indictment, and Veesenmayer, who was Plenipotentiary of the Reich in Hungary and found to be deeply implicated in the deportation of Hungarian Jews to the Eastern concentration camps, were each sentenced to twenty years' imprisonment. The Nuremberg tribunals have customarily viewed participation in the "slave-labor program" as a particularly serious crime, and Koerner, Pleiger, and Kehrl (all convicted on this charge, as well as others) received fifteenyear sentences. The other terms ranged from four to ten years234

232 Ibid., p. 7.

233 Ibid., p. 41.

234 Except for the defendant Stuckart, who was found to be so seriously ill that a prison term would endanger his life, and who was therefore sentenced only for the length of time which he had spent in confinement prior to and during trial.

in length, with Weizsaecker receiving a sentence of seven years. One might well quarrel with sentences as low as seven years for such “die-hard" Nazis as Darre and Dietrich, each of whom was convicted under three counts of the indictment, but no doubt the Tribunal was governed in its decision by its evaluation of the evidence of actual criminality under the definitions laid down in Control Council Law No. 10 rather than by the depth of the Party hue. Certainly the judgment as a whole was a distinguished and monumental piece of work, workmanlike and penetrating throughout. One of the members of the Tribunal (Judge Powers) filed a lengthy dissenting opinion, but concurred in the judgment of the Tribunal under Counts Seven and Eight of the indictment.

SOME LEGAL PROBLEMS

As was stated at the outset, the Nuremberg trials are not of concern to lawyers alone, and in the concluding portions of this article emphasis will be laid on their importance in current world affairs, as well as to social scientists and to scholars and professional men in general. Furthermore, in the course of describing the several trials and the judgments rendered therein, most of the major legal questions have been touched upon, and quotations from the judgments have indicated how the judges approached these matters.

Nevertheless, it may be useful to approach again a few of the more important legal problems, and attempt to draw together the strands of thought from all the judgments. In an article of this limited compass, only the most tentative and sketchy reference to these problems can be made; likewise, numerous questions of considerable interest must be entirely passed over.

Sources and Nature of International Law

Looking back over the four years during which the Nuremberg trials have been planned and carried out, it is apparent that two conceptions or circumstances have stood in the way of universal acceptance of the Nuremberg principles among jurists. The first is that there is no international legislature which can, by statutory process, define international crimes, prescribe penalties, and establish judicial machinery for the enforcement of international law. From this circumstance stem the objections derived by Continental lawyers under the maxim nullum crimen nulla poena sine lege, and raised by American lawyers by analogy from the ex post facto clause of the Constitution. The second is the fact that the judges on the Nuremberg Tribunals (as on nearly all if not all other war crimes tribunals) were composed of citizens of the victorious powers, whereas the defendants were citizens of the vanquished nations; this state of affairs has aroused