Just been thinking about all of this in the sense of what legal right did the Allies have to do this? Okay- any defeated nation normally faces it’s leaders getting the chop (The Great War probably being an exception) and normally they are not afforded a court hearing.
A few Japanese faced the courts after WW2- though this is not as quite clear as Nurmeburg (as in not as well publicised).
I was wondering where the force of law came from- apart from winning the war.
You’re asking only about the *letter * of the law, not the spirit, right? In that case, you already know the answer.
The Nuremberg trials charter based them on the principles of civilization and humanity, with the actions it was empowered to try defendants for being described as “Crimes Against Peace”, “War Crimes”, and “Crimes Against Humanity”.
A couple of members of the Supreme Court thought there was no other rationale. as did the prominent Republican of the time, Robert Taft.
Regards,
Shodan
Not necessarily true. If two nations went to war, they might settle through a treaty or some other agreement. Depends on what they were trying to do. The defeated leaders certainly got the axe if one nation completely over-ran and annexed the other outright. If they promised to play nice, the leaders sometimes had to do little more than pledge loyalty.
Have you seen 300 (or read the comic book?) That’s about war between Greece and Persia. The Persian king (Xerxes?) goes to the Spartans and simply demands that they give him earth and water as a sign of their loyalty and subservience to him. If Leonidas had capitulated immediately, he might have gotten off scot-free.
Similarly, the Romans left rulers in place wherever they went, asking only subservience to Rome. Many times, of course, the local rulers refused. The Romans killed them and substituted new rulers.
So it all depends. William killed Harold Godwinson, but that was during battle. Most of the Saxons were killed because they refused to acknowledge William, not because he defeated them. Over time, it became even softer. As I read history, the victors kept the rulers in power rather than make them into martyrs or lose control completely.
In the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, the Germans captured the Emperor of France and marched into Paris. The French started the war, and yet the Prussians didn’t kill the Emperor or any of his government (they did kill the rebels of the Commune, and anyone else that refused to admit the defeat).
That feeling probably lasted through the Great War. The French made no effort to bring the Kaiser to trial, and he spent his declining years in Holland. As the League of Nations emerged, and nations struggled to solve things on a global scale with diplomacy rather than guns, people began to think that any war was wrong, and that those who started wars had no justification for them. That led to Nuremberg, unthinkable even 30 years before.
Enough sick s**t happened in WWII to make trials useful, if only to present the facts to the world and to history.
It was also pretty common for the victors to ‘strongly encourage’ the vanquished rulers’ daughters to marry one of their sons (or vice-versa). Thus uniting their families, and ensuring that the next generation (the grandchildren) had bloodlines from both sides.
Under one theory the authority to try and punish of Nazi war criminals would lie with either the governments of countries they occupied (for atrocities that tool place withing their borders) or the German government itself. However after WWII the “German government” consisted of the Allied Control Council consisting of the representatives of the UK, US, USSR, and France.