H. OCCPAC General Memorandum No. 15, 29 March 1946- I. Meeting of Chief Prosecutors under London Charter, 5 April 1946 L. Military Government Ordinance No. 7, 18 October 1946.. M. Military Government Ordinance No. 11, 17 February 1947. DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY 15 August 1949 Secretary of the Army DEAR MR. SECRETARY: I have the honor to submit herewith the final report of the Office, Chief of Counsel for War Crimes on the Nuernberg war crimes trials held under the authority of Control Council Law No. 10. An interim statement on the progress of the trials (attached to this report as Appendix A) was submitted by me to the Secretary of the Army (then the Honorable Kenneth C. Royall) on 12 May 1948. At that time four trials were still in process, all of which have since been concluded by the rendition of judgments. The sentences imposed by the Nuernberg Tribunals in eleven of the twelve cases (all except United States v. Ernst von Weizsaecker, Case No. 11) have all been reviewed by the Military Governor. With a single exception, in which a death sentence imposed by a Tribunal (in United States v. Oswald Pohl, Case No. 4) was reduced to life imprisonment, all were confirmed. Seven of the twenty-three death sentences imposed (and confirmed) have been carried out, and the other condemned men are confined at Landsberg Prison in Bavaria, where the jail sentences of the other convicts are being served. Publication of the judgments and other important records of the trials is in process. This report does not cover the activities of the Secretary-General of the Nuernberg Military Tribunals, who was directly responsible to the Deputy Military Governor. I am advised by the Secretary-General (Dr. Howard H. Russell) that his final report will be submitted to the High Commissioner in due course. With the submission of this report my task as Chief of Counsel for War Crimes and as Chief Prosecutor for the United States under the London Charter is concluded, and I respectfully request that my assignment in those capacities be terminated forthwith. Respectfully yours, Telford Taylor TELFORD TAYLOR Chief of Counsel for War Crimes INTRODUCTION Primarily, this report undertakes to describe the creation, organization, and functioning of the Office, Chief of Counsel for War Crimes (OCCWC). The need for such an agency was envisaged by the Theater Judge Advocate (the late Brig. Gen. Edward C. Betts) and the Director of the Legal Division of OMGUS (then Mr. Charles Fahy) in October 1945. The OCCWC was officially established on 24 October 1946, shortly after rendition of the judgment in the first Nuernberg trial before the International Military Tribunal (IMT), and was formally deactivated on 20 June 1949. This report covers the entire period from October 1945 to June 1949. The basic policies which governed the operations of OCCWC were in part prescribed by higher authority-through OMGUS and the Department of the Army-and in part determined by me as Chief of Counsel for War Crimes. The evolution and execution of these policies are sketched herein. Throughout, principal attention has been devoted to the "executive" and "administrative" operations of the OCCWC, including such matters as the preparation of Military Government Ordinance No. 7 (under which the Nuernberg Military Tribunals were constituted), selection of defendants, methods of interrogation of witnesses and suspects, handling of linguistic problems, and cooperation with other governments in the field of war crimes. These things may seem of minor importance and prove of little interest to those who are chiefly interested in the actual outcome of the trials, the legal reasoning of the judgments, the historical revelations of the documents and testimony, or the immediate and long-term significance of the trials in world affairs. I have touched on some of the legal and historical features of the trials toward the end of the report, and have dealt with them more fully in the April 1949 issue of International Conciliation1 (attached hereto as Appendix B). In any event, on such subjects there will be no lack of books and articles in the years to come; indeed the Nuernberg bibliography is already sufficiently impressive. Glamorless as this description of the Nuernberg "machinery" may be, it wants writing. There is more to a judicial process than the records and judgments in the decided cases. The Nuernberg trials were car 1 Nuremberg Trials: War Crimes and International Law, by Telford Taylor, comprising the April 1949 issue of "International Conciliation" (published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace), with a foreword by Dr. James T. Shotwell, President of the Endowment, infra, p. 122 ried out under quadripartite authority, but in pursuit of objectives thought to be of benefit to all mankind. It is important, therefore, not only that the documents, testimony, and judgments be widely published, but also that a record be left telling how the individual defendants were selected, who prosecuted and who defended them, and how the charges were drawn, and describing the administrative paraphernalia of the Nuernberg process. This report is an attempt to supply that record, and no effort has been made to "jazz up" the account for the general reader. |