At the time of the Nuremberg tribunals no one knew for sure whether Hitler was dead. Did they try him anywhere in absentia? I know for a fact that this happened with lesser fry. And what about the leaders they knew were dead, like Himmler? If there were no such trials then legally Hitler and Himmler are innocent of any wrongdoing and that seems just grotesque.
Martin Bormann was tried* in absentia*, but it doesn’t appear that Adolf Hitler was.
Interesting question. I don’t think anyone really believes Hitler or Himmler were innocent.
Are deceased people ever tried in absentia in the modern western world? I’m sure they have been at some time in the past. I mean a criminal trial, of course. Civil action against an estate isn’t uncommon.
I don’t think there was ever a trial. First off, while there were rumors to the contrary, I don’t think there was all that much doubt that Hitler was dead. His death was reported the day after his suicide. And I wonder if people at the time would have really thought it was important to establish Hitler’s guilt. He was the man in charge, wasn’t it obvious that he was responsible? In some ways demonstrating that people further down the chain were also responsible for their actions was more important.
Hitler was well known to be dead by the time of Nuremberg. That was not the case for Borman.
I don’t think any civilised legal system (not that such a thing exists but I’ll pretend that the ones in developed countries are semi-civilised) have ways of putting dead people on trial, but Gracia Jacques was given a trial by a mob in Haiti and beaten to death, despite being a corpse long before this time.
The most infamous postumus trial imo is that of Pope Formosus in the Cadaver Synod. I think that he was dug up because he had to be in the court room to be put on trial. Although he was found guilty, things did not go well for those who put him on trial in the end…
My emphasis:
Many did not think it was at all important to establish ANY of the senior Nazi’s guilt, including Churchill who wanted to declare them outlaws (and thus liable to be summarily shot). He feared that by introducing this bizarre fake court charade that was basically practicing post-facto law there was a real danger of giving up national soverignty - and I think that later developments in so-called international law have proven him right.
BTW there was one empty-chair trial against Hitler: a de-nazification hearing by a Spruchkammer in Munich (where Hitler’s private residence was registered) on 15 October 1948, the result of which was that Hitler’s estate was confiscated in favour of the state of Bavaria. German-language magazine article.
This. There were persistent stories for decades that we was still alive, presumably living in Argentina or some such place. From the start, this had all the same reliability status, as the later belief that Elvis is still alive. It was urban legend from the start, really, but as the years passed, people became less sure of the real history.
And the Internet wasn’t around to fuel rumors of his resurrection or theories of faking his death and going to the moon.
Wrong. Never legally proven guilty does not equal innocent.
I knew there was something funny about Neal Armstrong.
Innocent until proven guilty?
As it happens, the Hitler-was-innocent claim is one that gets some play in far right holocaust denial circles.
The story is that while the holocaust never happened, if it did (which it totally didn’t), then it was perpetrated by lower-down members of the Nazi bureaucracy like Eichmann who exceeded their orders. And that Hitler, who was really a nice guy (and a terrific dancer) would have been completely shocked and outraged if he’d found out about it.
I’m not making this up, you can’t parody holocaust deniers.
The FBI investigated rumors about Hitler still being alive:
One document is from 1950 and many parts are still blacked out.
Another famous one, Oliver Cromwell was posthumously executed. As a consequence, his head merits it’s own wiki article.
Hitler was the subject of a mock trial in Madison Square Garden in 1934. He was pissed about it and the fact that the US government wouldn’t do anything about it just made him madder. When he complained to the US ambassador, he was told about freedom of speech and how the government couldn’t stop it. He was mystified. To him, it was something that could be cleared up quickly by a couple hundred cops with nightsticks.
In the years following WW II, nobody seriously doubted that Hitler was dead. However, you will find this topic discussed in newspapers and magazines of that era, even respectable ones.
I would say the notion wasn’t perceived as crazy as claims that Elvis is still alive are today.
I don’t think American jurisprudence claims anyone is “innocent until proven guilty.” I think the government is required to consider you innocent until you are proven guilty, which is an entirely different thing. You are (actually) guilty or innocent depending on whether or not you did it, not how any agency regards you.