Help for a school documentary on the Nuremberg Trials

[LeónOcta]

Hi, the issue is that I have a friend who must make a school documentary specifically about the Nüremberg trials. Obviously it is not the idea to make a rebuttal of the Holocaust, because, considering that it is school supplies, she does not want to get into trouble, but plans to do a truly neutral job on the subject.
Where, instead of being "the Nuremberg trials were a sham" be more like "The Nuremberg trials were not as fair as many believe."
With this in mind, my post would be helpful as to what material about the Nuremberg trials could be used in this school project that is not very "anti-holocaust" or very amateur. The questions that would be tried to answer in the documentary are:

• How were the trials carried out?
• What evidence was shown?
• What inconsistencies existed between the alleged evidence and the empirical facts?
• Why did it end that way?

I know that for many of you this would be as easy as searching the threads of this forum (something that is already being done), but I would really like to be able to guide us on faithful bibliographic sources and what data to mention and what not. Mainly about false accusations and torture of prisoners. She will be reading your answers!

My English is not so good, as you may have noticed (it is not my native language), I hope you can understand!!

[Moderator]

LeonOcta:
We have many informative threads here about the Nuremberg proceedings, this one in particular covers a lot of ground:

Nuremberg - Fair Trial or Show Trial ?:
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=11053

M1

[Lamprecht]

Indeed, much is written in the above thread, stickied at the top of the forum. A good intro is also here: https://en.metapedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_trials

And the search function gives useful information: search.php?keywords=Nuremberg+NMT+IMT&terms=any&author=&sc=1&sf=all&sr=posts&sk=t&sd=d&st=0&ch=300&t=0&submit=Search

After reading some of the info listed then if there's something confusing maybe make a thread asking a more specific question. It's a rather big subject. C.W. Porter claims to be the only person that has read the trial transcript completely; it's rather long. He published "Not Guilty at Nuremberg":


Not Guilty at Nuremberg: The German Defense Case - C.W. Porter
Intro: http://archive.is/tGhqi
Book PDF: http://web.archive.org/web/201911240734 ... /znggb.pdf or https://web.archive.org/web/100if_/http ... emberg.pdf
HTML: http://archive.is/ONR0j

[borjastick]

It's a very straightforward situation of a stitch up. Those two protocols about evidence and fact being taken for granted. Was it 19 and 20. Someone help me out here. That showed from the get go Nuremberg was all about hanging them all and even if they told the truth they would still swing. It was a public lynching. Simple as that.

[EtienneSC]

... Those two protocols about evidence and fact being taken for granted. Was it 19 and 20. Someone help me out here.

Sure, It's IMT Charter Articles 19 and 21:

Article 19.
The Tribunal shall not be bound by technical rules of evidence. It shall adopt and apply to the greatest possible extent expeditious and nontechnical procedure, and shall admit any evidence which it deems to be of probative value.

Article 21.
The Tribunal shall not require proof of facts of common knowledge but shall take judicial notice thereof. It shall also take judicial notice of official governmental documents and reports of the United Nations, including the acts and documents of the committees set up in the various allied countries for the investigation of war crimes, and of records and findings of military or other Tribunals of any of the United Nations.

Source:
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/imtconst.asp
The website is a useful resource to check citations.

[Lamprecht]

• How were the trials carried out?

Check out some quotes from the recent thread: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=13348

These post-war show trials have otherwise been widely acknowledged by "experts" as little more than revenge.

US prosecutor Robert Jackson stated on 26 July 1946:
"The Allies are still, technically-speaking, at war with Germany... As a military tribunal, this tribunal represents a continuation of the war efforts of the Allied nations."

US Supreme Court Chief Justice Harlan Fiske Stone wrote:
"Chief US prosecutor Jackson is away conducting his high-grade lynching party in Nuremberg, I don't mind what he does to the Nazis, but I hate to see the pretense that he is running a court and proceeding according to common law. This is a little too sanctimonious a fraud to meet my old-fashioned ideas."

U.S. Congressional Representative, Lawrence H. Smith of Wisconsin said:
"The Nuremberg Trials are so repugnant to the Anglo-Saxon principles of justice that we must forever be ashamed of that page in our history."

Iona Nikitchenko, one of the three main drafters of the London Charter and the Soviet Union's judge at the Nuremberg trials, stated before the Tribunal convened:
"We are dealing here with the chief war criminals who have already been convicted and whose conviction has been already announced by both the Moscow and Crimea [Yalta] declarations by the heads of the [Allied] governments... The whole idea is to secure quick and just punishment for the crime."
and:
"If... the judge is supposed to be impartial, it would only lead to unnecessary delays."

Honorable Koka Subba Rao, LL.D., Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of India, stated:
"...the Nuremberg trial did not comply with the requirements of law.."

American attorney Warren Magee, who served as defense counsel in the Ministries Trial:
"'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth' is the driving force behind the prosecutions at Nuremberg. While it grieves me to say this, the prosecution staff, its lawyers, research analysts, interpreters, clerks, etc. is largely Jewish. Many are Germans who fled their country and only recently took out American citizenship. Jewish influence was even apparent at the first trial, labeled the IMT. Atrocities against Jews are always stressed above all else... With persecuted Jews in the background directing the proceedings, the trials cannot be maintained in an objectivity aloof from vindictiveness, personal grievances, and racial desires for revenge... Basic principles have been disregarded by 'new' Americans, many of whom have embedded in their very beings European racial hatreds and prejudices."

The Right Honourable The Lord Hankey, Cabinet Secretary, top aide to Prime Minister David Lloyd George and the War Cabinet that directed Britain in the First World War:
"The proud story of British justice is occasionally marred by shabby episodes where the national character falls below its accustomed standards of chivalry, honour and common sense. Examples are the burning of Joan of Arc in the market place of Rouen in May, 1431; the trial of King Charles I and his execution in Whitehall on January 30, 1649; the court-martial and execution of Admiral Byng in 1756, 'pour enjourager les autres,' as Voltaire remarked at the time; and the six-years’ long impeachment of Warren Hastings before his acquittal in 1791; all of which have been condemned by modern historians. To that list, I doubt not will be added in due course the War Crimes Trials that began with the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal on 20 November, 1945, and ended, so far as Great Britain was concerned, with the trial which is so well described in this volume…"

Justice of the Supreme Court of Ohio William L. Hart:
"In my judgment, the procedure by which the Nuremberg Tribunal was created and the criminal trials thereunder conducted, was completely fraught with illegality..."

Rear Admiral Henry C. Flanagan, U.S.N. Commander, Transport Divisions, Pacific, World War II:
"Those 'War Crimes Tribunals' had the same legal status as a Kangaroo Court and conducted those trials with the same regard for justice as could be expected of a Kangaroo Court... The 'War Crimes Trials' can only be justified by Marxist, Leninist, Stalinist and New Deal doctrines."

General Olof Gerhard Thornell, Royal Swedish Army, Commander-in-chief, Armed Forces of Sweden, 1940-1944, Chief of Military Staff to His Majesty, King Gustav V, 1944-1950:
"You are perfectly right in branding the Nuremberg 'war crimes trials' in general as violating the common principles for civilized jurisdiction. There seems to be more of vengeance–'vae victis'—than of impartial justice..."

Professor Richard Overy:
"[T]hat the war crimes trials... were expressions of a legally dubious 'victors' justice' was [a point raised by]... senior [Allied] legal experts who doubted the legality of the whole process..."

According to famous US Judge Learned Hand, who is quoted more often by legal scholars and by the Supreme Court of the U.S. than any other lower-court judge:
"I may, and do, say that I have always regarded the Nuremberg prosecutions as a step backward in international law, and a precedent that will prove embarrassing, if not disastrous, in the future."

Much more in the book cited here: viewtopic.php?p=97236#p97236



From another post: viewtopic.php?p=96701#p96701

The Germans were invaded by the USSR on one hand and the Western Allies on the other hand. Both of these groups at the end of the war had great animosity towards the German people as many of their loved ones who invaded Europe never returned. The atrocity propaganda, including but not limited to homicidal gas chambers, was already widely circulating in the Western press years before the war had ended. Various "reports" ranging from dubious or outrageous to preposterous were written. This was just as much a part of the war as bombs and bullets. During the war, officials in the various governments remarked that they did not find these "gas chamber" stories credible. WW1 had a lot of that nonsense and people remembered that the allegations were nothing but lies.

Nevertheless, what we know is that the USA, the British, the USSR, and many other governments did in fact launch a "Conspiracy" to invade and conquer Germany. And after they did that, they orchestrated post-war show trials which have since been criticized by numerous legal experts throughout the world. I have compiled a number of quotes in the Nuremberg thread that is stickied at the top of this forum discussing this.

In the USA there was a man named Thomas J. Dodd, who was both a senator and diplomat. Eventually he became a prosecutor at Nuremberg. His son went on to become a US senator as well and even tried unsuccessfully to run for president. Tom Dodd's son wrote a book, entitled "Letters from Nuremberg" which includes a multitude of the letters he wrote in 1945-46 to his wife while he was abroad, mostly in Germany, as a top prosecutor in the Allied war crimes trials.

During September 1945, Thomas J. Dodd wrote:

"You know how I have despised anti-Semitism. You know how strongly I feel toward those who preach intolerance of any kind. With that knowledge -- you will understand when I tell you that this staff is about seventy-five percent Jewish. Now my point is that the Jews should stay away from this trial -- for their own sake.
"For -- mark this well -- the charge 'a war for the Jews' is still being made and in the post-war years it will be made again and again.
"The too large percentage of Jewish men and women here will be cited as proof of this charge. Sometimes it seems that the Jews will never learn about these things. They seem intent on bringing new difficulties down on their own heads. I do not like to write about this matter -- it is distasteful to me -- but I am disturbed about it. They are pushing and crowding and competing with each other and with everyone else."

- "Letters from Nuremberg: My Father's Narrative of a Quest for Justice"
http://archive.vn/W5CuD or http://web.archive.org/web/202005300056 ... berg-dodd/