By Krishna Jha
The bell tolls for all those who while treating the living world step beyond. To cross the limits means getting over to barbarity. But consequences come in same measures. No one is spared. Nuremberg Trials are the live examples of the same.
October 18 this year marks the 80th year of the first indictment of the Nuremberg trials that was done for prosecuting crimes committed under fascist regimes. This date is a reminder that those who engage in abuse of power and crimes against humanity, one day they will be held accountable, regardless of their power and position. In one of the death camps, called Auschwitz, one of the Nazi officers, Rudolf Hess, confirmed that from May 1940 to December 1943 alone 2,500, 000 persons were killed in the ovens. Another half million died of starvation or diseases. In all, in Auschwitz alone, four million people were put to death. Children taken from mother’s arms were thrown alive into flaming furnaces.
On October 18, 1945, 24 former Nazi leaders, among them the most ruthless ones like Hermann Göring and Albert Speer, were indicted of war crimes. The trial lasted 10 months, with delivery of the judgment completed on October 1, 1946.
The Nuremberg Trials were a series of military tribunals held by the Allied powers (United States, Great Britain, Soviet Union, and France) after World War II to prosecute prominent leaders of Nazi Germany for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and crimes against peace. Held in Nuremberg, Germany, between 1945 and 1946, these trials established a critical precedence in international law by holding individuals accountable for their actions and formally documenting the atrocities of the Holocaust.
Robert Jackson, outstanding American lawyer, who was the chief prosecutor of the United States, was right when he said, “Our proof will be disgusting and you will say I have robbed you off your sleep, but these are the things that have turned the stomach of the world. Germany became one vast torture chamber, cries of victims was heard all over the world, brought shudders to civilized people. I am the one who received during this war the stories with suspicion and skepticism, but the proof here is so overwhelming that not one word that I speak will be denied.” Jackson proved right as the wounds inflicted on the world by the Nazi aggression were so deep that they are still bleeding. Nazism has entered the world in a new form. They would be living symbols of racial hatred, of terrorism and violence, and of the arrogance and cruelty of power, ruthless nationalism and militarism.
Hermann Goring was the second most powerful official in Nazi Germany. For much of Hitler’s dictatorship, only Hitler himself was more powerful. Goring played a leading role in Germany’s plan to conquer eastern Europe. He also helped develop Nazi policies to rob and murder Jews. After the Second World War, the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg sentenced Goring to death. Before his execution, Goring committed suicide.
Nazism was the creation of German monopoly capitalism. It came along with power, consolidated itself and was enabled to perpetrate terror and atrocities as a result of the support and direct assistance of international imperialist reaction.
Nazism, like fascism in Italy, had a tendency to establish dictatorship of the most reactionary and imperialist forces. The German industrialists and finance magnets, like Krupps, the Voglers, the Lavenfelds, the Schrodes, the Schnitzlers and many more offered backing, to the SS vandals. These uncrowned kings of the capital placed Germany’s entire economic potential in the service of Nazi aggression. They were involved in the inhuman Nazi experiments on Human being available to them. They killed tens of thousands in the horrific process of experiments. People were enslaved and there were dire consequences they had to face.
In all, 199 defendants were tried at Nuremberg, 161 were convicted, and 37 were sentenced to death, including 12 of those tried by the International Military Tribunal. Holocaust crimes were included in a few of the trials but were the major focus of only the US trial of Einsatzgruppen leaders. The defendants generally acknowledged that the crimes they were accused of occurred but denied that they were responsible, as they were following orders from a higher authority.
The Nazis’ highest authority, the person most to blame for the Holocaust, was missing at the trials. Adolf Hitler had killed himself in the final days of the war, as had several of his closest aides. Many more criminals were never tried. Some fled Germany to live abroad, including hundreds who came to the United States.
Nazi Germany persecuted, brutalized, and murdered groups of people whom they saw as enemies or threats. The Nazis saw Jews as their primary enemy. They targeted Jewish men, women, and children with unrelenting focus. The scope of terror and the huge human loss raise the questions: What groups did the Nazis target? And why did they target these specific groups of people?
Nazi Germany targeted Jews because the Nazis from the very beginning, wanted ruthlessly and tirelessly isolate, impoverish, and discriminate against Jewish people in Germany. During World War II, this policy escalated to mass murder. In total, the Nazis and their allies and collaborators murdered six million Jews in a genocide now known as the Holocaust.
In addition to the genocide of Europe’s Jews, the Nazis also persecuted, brutalized, or murdered Communists and additional groups of people. In some cases, they did so with the help of their allies and collaborators. (IPA Service)
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