The post-war trials are often used by the victors as a tool to pressure the losers, to continue the war well beyond the ceasefire, we talked about it in an article on new wars and I want to talk about it in more depth in this article regarding the processes. of Nuremberg.
During the Nuremberg trials, on the legal level, there were many irregularities, starting with the fact that under the guise of the international court there was actually a classic court of the winners over the losers and that new laws were introduced to punish old crimes whose dimensions had become too big to be punished according to traditional canons, however, this procedure led to a legal contradiction that made one of the fundamental principles of the law, the non-retroactivity of crimes, disappear, creating a dangerous precedent in the world that was going to be built thereafter.
After the Second World War with the defeat of the Third Reich by the United Nations (better known as the Allies), that is the United States, the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom, an international court was established in the city of Nuremberg. Nuremberg was chosen for its symbolic value as it was one of the most iconic cities of the Reich and was one of the symbolic cities of the Nazi dictatorship, it was also the city where, in 1935 on the occasion of the 7th national meeting of the Nazi party, they were launched the “law for the protection of German blood and honor” (RGBl. I S. 1146) , the “Reich Citizenship Act” (RGBl. I S. 1146) and the “Reich Flag Law” , known to the world as the Nuremberg Laws.
The military tribunal, set up by the allies in Nuremberg, presented itself to the world as an international, just and impartial court which, however, was made up exclusively of members of the victorious powers of the war, configuring itself de facto as a veritable tribunal of victors.
The four main victorious powers of the war, France, United Kingdom, United States and the Soviet Union, in organizing the court established that each of the victors would appoint two judges, one principal and one alternate, and two prosecutors were appointed, who would have the task to judge and punish the war criminals of the Third Reich.
Already from the premises, the Nuremberg court appeared as a political court, it looked more like a court of the victors aimed at continuing the war in the courtroom, more than an international court aimed at doing justice, it was however granted to the accused who did not want to resort to a defense lawyer private, to have access to an “ex officio” lawyer , and given the extent and scope of the charges and the indictments, the life of the defense lawyers was not easy and in anticipation of the years to come, having in one's curriculum the defense of a former Nazi hierarch certainly would not have helped to business. In any case, the trials took place with a certain regularity, the whole world was present in that courtroom, everyone was waiting for the sentence and no one expected acquittals or pardons, we can indeed say that the outcome of the Nuremberg trials was already written before you even started thinking about Nuremberg, before you even started thinking about the trials, however it was necessary to put on an international show and carry out a regular mock trial.
If on the one hand the outcome of the trials is not surprising, it is not surprising the severity with which the defendants were punished and the sentences handed down are not surprising, what is surprising is the way in which those sentences were reached, since there was no recourse to Nuremberg. to laws in force in Germany, also because according to the German law of the Third Reich the Nazis had acted in full legality, it was made use of the US, French, British or Soviet military codes, in which punishments were foreseen for crimes committed by the Nazis during the war, however, the various military and civil codes provided for different penalties for the same crime and in that particular political context using one penal code instead of another had enormous political weight, the Americans did not want the US rules to be applied, the Soviets Soviet norms, the French wanted Nazi criminals to be deprived of the rule of law and outlawed, but while there was an urgent need to try, judge and punish the German criminals and then a "alternative" solution was found particularly original, it was decided to resort to international rules against piracy, thus defining Nazi criminals as hostis generis humani, enemies of mankind, and starting from this principle new laws were built to punish old crimes that had reached such a size as to make any possible traditional condemnation disproportionate.
Thus was born the concept of crimes against humanity and the retroactive nature of the rules aimed at prosecuting and punishing the criminals who committed those crimes was established. Crimes against humanity were born in 1946 but they applied to anyone, or almost everyone, they applied to the defeated, they applied first in Nuremberg and then Tokyo.
The retroactive nature of these rules, which therefore applied to crimes committed before those same laws established the existence of those crimes, represented an ethical and legal problem, on the one hand there was a need to punish those that the whole world recognized as crimes, however they were unprecedented crimes they were crimes committed in compliance with the law and legality of the state in which they were committed, and it was difficult to decide how to behave. The world demanded justice, the victims demanded justice but the boundary between justice and revenge was very thin, almost imperceptible and for many it was difficult to conceive of justice obtained by violating the laws.
In the end, however, it was decided to make those new rules effectively retroactive and to punish the Nazi criminals on the basis of a newborn international law which on that occasion would have been retroactive.
this decision produced important sentences, many were sentenced to death, others to life imprisonment, still others were sentenced to serve 20 and 10 years in prison and only very few defendants at the end of the trials were acquitted.
The seven sentenced to prison terms (from ten years to life imprisonment) by the international military court in Nuremberg were transferred in 1947 to the Spandau prison where they would serve their sentence.
The first to cross the gates of Spandau was Konstantin von Neurath, sentenced to 15 years in prison and released for health reasons in 1954, von Neurath died 2 years later, in 1956, and again for health reasons, in 1955. Erich Raeder left prison despite his life sentence. In 1956 it was the turn of Karl Dönitz, released from prison after having fully served his sentence of 10 years in prison and the following year, in 1957, Walter Funk left the prison, sentenced to life in prison and also released. it for health reasons.
The last two prisoners to leave Spandau were Albert Speer and Baldur von Schirach, both sentenced to 20 years in prison and both released in 1966 after serving their sentences.
The only life inmate who would never leave was Rudolf Hess, who served his sentence until 1987, the year of his death in prison.
Sources:
L. Baldissara, P. Pezzino, Judge and Punish
R.H. Jackson, The Tribunal of Humanity. The indictment of the Nuremberg trial
C. Schmitt, Answers in Nuremberg
D. Zolo, The justice of the victors, from Nuremberg to Baghdad