The Nuremberg Trials

Resolved: That the Nuremberg Trials were not a true application of justice, but rather one that was heavily biased in favor of the victorious. As Pro, I will assume the burden of proof. However, I would still expect my opponent to argue in favor of the Nuremberg trials as well as offering counterarguments to my statements. This will follow the normal 3 round debate format. My arguments in support of the resolution are as follows: 1. The charges pressed against the defense were created In Post Facto, meaning that they were created after the acts had already been committed. At the time that the German officials on trial committed the various atrocities for which they were charged, no international law specifically banned their actions. The prosecution was therefore able to construct their charges to maximize the rate of conviction. Most national legal codes, including the law of the United States, stipulate that a crime must have been illegal at the time the act was committed in order to charges to be pressed. 2. The Nuremberg Trials were meant only the punish Germans and not all those who had committed reprehensible acts during the war. Given that the charges were created after the crimes, it is suspicious that none of the questionable actions undertaken by the Allies were brought up. Both sides bombed large numbers of civilians, a notable example of this being the firebombing of Dresden by Allied forces. This was notably left out of the definition of both "crimes against humanity" and "war crimes" though it can easily be seen as either. It follows from this that the court was not interested in punishing actual crimes that had been committed, but simply in punishing the German leadership. 3. The record of the members of the court on carrying out justice was far from clean. Iona Nikitchenko was one of the Soviet judges at Nuremberg. He also presided over some of the most notorious of the 'show trials' used by Stalin to convict his enemies during the Great Purge. This history of a complete contempt for justice does not reflect well on what intent there would have been for Nikitchenko's role in the Nuremberg trials. 4. The main indictments of the Nuremberg Trials have not been charged against nations of the winning side in following years. There is now a clear precedent for pressing charges of war crimes, aggression, and conspiracy against peace, but these charges have notably not been pressed against many world leaders. Noam Chomsky summed it up by saying, "If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged." The crimes pressed against the Germans during the Nuremberg trials have been committed by the United States numerous times since then, notably in the cases of Vietnam. The beginning of the war was certainly an act of aggression and the Strategic Hamlet Program, though far more benign than the Holocaust, was still a crime against humanity. Even if this specific example cannot be accepted, for every one that is struck down another can but brought up. Despite this, US and British government officials remain uncharged for any such crimes. It follows that when the charges were being brought against the Germans, Allied officials had no intention of these charges ever being brought against their own nations. Conclusion: Considering the historical context and legacy of the Nuremberg Trials, it is hard to believe that they were meant to be just at all. They were not fair to the defendants, and equally importantly they did not treat both sides equally. Though I do not deny the fact that many of the Nazis were terrible and deserved their punishment, the trials were nonetheless carried out in a way that was unfair to them. More importantly, many crimes just as terrible as theirs went unpunished because they were committed by the winning side. Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org...... - Wikipedia article providing general information on the Nuremberg Trails which repeats some of my criticisms. http://en.wikipedia.org...... - Wikipedia article providing information about the Strategic Hamlet Project in Vietnam. It notable omits the fact that a large number of people died as a result of this project, as discussed by Noam Chomsky in "Imperial Ambitions." http://www.brainyquote.com...... - The quote from Chomsky was found here. http://en.wikipedia.org...... - Wikpedia article provides information about the show trails of Stalin. http://avalon.law.yale.edu...... - This is a very detailed and unbiased assessment of the trial conducted at Yale Law School.