robert jackson nuremberg speech

The prisoners not only were beaten with whips without cause, similarly as in the Concentration Camp Bredow near Stettin till they lost consciousness, but they were also tortured in other manners, e.g. “Article 124. Others joined only after success seemed to have validated its lawlessness or power had invested it with immunity from the processes of the law. Only after these lawless innovations proved successful at home were they taken abroad. We must never forget that the record on which we judge these defendants today is the record on which history will judge us tomorrow. Extermination of the Jews enabled the Nazis to bring a practiced hand to similar measures against Poles, Serbs, and Greeks. In an article appearing in Der Stürmer on 19 March 1942 he complained that Christian teachings have stood in the way of “racial solution of the Jewish question in Europe”, and quoted enthusiastically as the twentieth century solution the Führer’s proclamation of February 24, 1942 that “the Jew will be exterminated.” And on November 4, 1943 Streicher declared in Der Stürmer that the Jews “have disappeared from Europe and that the Jewish ‘Reservoir of the East’ from which the Jewish plague has for centuries beset the people of Europe, has ceased to exist.” Streicher now has the effrontery to tell us he is “only a Zionist”-he says he wants only to return the Jews to Palestine. Credit: Edmund Duffy, The Baltimore Sun, December 7, 1945. If aggressive warfare in violation of treaty obligation is a matter of international cognizance the preparations for it must also be of concern to the international community. Judicial action always comes after the event. From the beginning it was obvious that only the first days after the occupation would offer the opportunity for carrying out pogroms: After the disarmament of the partisans the self-cleansing actions ceased necessarily. Within these two days, the town of Sluzk had to be cleared of Jews by all means…. While this declaration of the law by the Charter is final, it may be contended that the prisoners on trial are entitled to have it applied to their conduct only most charitably if at all. The omission of notice was not due to overworked staff; it was due to policy. We are within 5 minutes of the recessing time. On few other subjects is our evidence so abundant or so damaging. Mass punishments were inflicted, so savage that whole communities were extinguished. Yet every custom has its origin in some single act, and every agreement has to be initiated by the action of some state. The fact of the war and the course of the war, which is the central theme of our case, is history. The tasks of all of us are such as to make heavy demands on patience and good will. It is true of course, that we have no judicial precedent for the Charter. So, as Jackson stood at the podium in the courtroom of this historic trial, he formally acknowledged the bench, and then recognized “[t]he privilege of opening the first trial in history for crimes against the peace of the world …”.   Jackson then brilliantly captured both the honor and the grave responsibility he felt in this single, remarkable phrase: “That four great nations flushed with victory and stung with injury, stay the hand of vengeance and voluntarily submit their captive enemies to the judgment of the law is one of the most significant tributes that Power has ever paid to Reason.”. Your verdict of “guilty” against these organizations will render prima facie guilty, as nearly as we can learn, thousands upon thousands of members now in custody of United States forces and of other armies. Every German has the right, within the limits of the general laws, to express his opinions freely in speech, in writing, in print, in picture form, or in any other way. These preparations were of a magnitude which surpassed all need of defense, and every defendant, and every intelligent German, well understood them to be for aggressive purposes. They are symbols of fierce nationalisms and of militarism, of intrigue and war-making which have embroiled Europe generation after generation, crushing its manhood, destroying its homes, and impoverishing its life…. It rather looked like a revolution ….”. Once again the West stood aghast, but it dreaded war, it saw no remedy except war, and it hoped against hope that the Nazi fever for expansion had run its course. John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo are apparently deaf to such historical arguments. This is a captured report from the Commissioner of Sluzk on October 30, 1941 which describes the scene in more detail. The Party order directed Party organs which we here denounce as criminal associations, the SA and SS “to be employed for the occupation of the trade union properties, and for the taking into custody of personalities who come into question.” And it directed the taking into “protective custody” of all chairmen and district secretaries of such unions and branch directors of the labor bank. Even at home, Germans saw that Germany was being led to ruin by these mad men, and the attempt on July 20, 1944 to assassinate Hitler, an attempt fostered by men of highest station, was a desperate effort by internal forces in Germany to stop short of ruin. It must also reach men who possess themselves of great power and make deliberate and concerted use of it to set in motion evils which. In a speech made on January 25, 1944 the Defendant Frank, Governor General of Poland, boasted, “I have sent 1,300,000 Polish workers into the Reich” (05.9-PS, P. 2). Our American cities have not been bombed by day and by night, by humans, and by robots. The Christian Trade Union had over 1,250,000 members. And that is as far as we accuse or propose to inquire. 47). For the rest, as regards the execution of the action, I must point out to my deepest regret that the latter bordered already on sadism. He dared not justify . Robert Jackson, opening speech: ... Narrator: On November 21, the packed courtroom in Nuremberg fell silent as Robert Jackson opened the case against the Nazis with a speech of nearly four-hours. The Hitler-Hindenburg decree of February 28, 1933 contained no such safeguards. There were the infamous Nuremberg decrees of September 15, 1935 (Reichsgesetzblatt 1935, Part. Under the clutch of the most intricate web of espionage and intrigue that any modern state has endured, and persecution and torture of a kind that has not been visited upon the world in many centuries, the elements of the German population which were both decent and courageous were annihilated. It is not the purpose in my part of this case to deal with the individual crimes. It was his primary objective to hold Nazi leaders, accused of the devastating crime of “aggressive war-making,” accountable within the reckonable framework of the law. The very minimum legal consequence of the treaties making aggressive wars illegal is to strip those who incite or wage them of every defense the law ever gave, and to leave war-makers subject to judgment by the usually accepted principles of the law of crimes. Among the nations which unite in accusing these defendants the United States is perhaps in a position to be the most dispassionate, for, having sustained the least injury, it is perhaps the least animated by vengeance. The German people were in the hands of the police, the police were in the hands of the Nazi Party, and the Party was in the hands of a ring of evil men, of whom the defendants here before you are surviving and representative leaders. His strongest attacks were reserved for Goering. But we who believe in freedom of conscience and of religion base no charge of criminality on anybody’s ideology. Justice Jackson Delivers Opening Statement at Nuremberg, November 21, 1945, Opening Statement before the International Military Tribunal. “Every association may become incorporated (Erwerb der Rechtsfähigkeit) according to the provisions of the civil law. We of the Western World heard of gas wagons in which Jews and political opponents were asphyxiated. “In other cases, in the future, the accused are to be secretly brought to Germany, and the further conduct of the trial carried on here. He is the only person in United States history to have held all three of those offices. They are symbols of fierce nationalisms and of militarism, of intrigue and war-making which have embroiled Europe generation after generation, crushing its manhood, destroying its homes, and impoverishing its life. It is not necessary, however, to resolve the controversy as to who set the fire. It provided that the owners of enterprises should be the “Führer” and the workers should be the followers. Eventually all prisoners of war were taken out of control of the Army and put in the hands of Himmler and the SS (058-PS). Of course, the idea that a state, any more than a corporation, commits crimes, is a fiction. The third Count of the Indictment is based on the definition of War Crimes contained in the Charter. Ribbentrop never answered them. Accused before this Tribunal as criminal organizations are certain political and police organizations which the evidence will show to have been instruments of cohesion in planning and executing the crimes I have detailed. Mon-Fri: 8:30am - 4:30pm. On October 4, 1946, Robert H. Jackson, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, who had taken a leave from the Court to become U.S. Chief of Counsel at the International Military Tribunal ("IMT") at Nuremberg, journeyed to Buffalo to deliver a speech at the Centennial That plan in the original bears the initials of the Defendants Keitel and Jodl. The Robert H. Jackson Center envisions a global society where the universal principles of equality, fairness and justice prevail. Not only is Germany not safe in the face of the Jews as long as one Jew lives in Europe, but a so the Jewish question is hardly solved in Europe so long as Jews live in the rest of the world.”. These were not the work of underling-degenerates but of master-minds high in the Nazi conspiracy. Although Jackson minimized the political dimensions of the trial in his opening statement, his speech participates in ongoing debates about the relationship between international courts and international politics. To apply the sanctions of the law to those whose conduct is found criminal by the standards I have outlined, is the responsibility committed to this Tribunal. But so far as the question can properly be involved in this case, the issue is one of no novelty and is one on which legal opinion has well crystalized. By that very act, we have made obsolete many legal precedents and have given the legal profession the task of re-examining many of its codes and treaties.”, The Geneva Protocol of 1924 for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes, signed by the representatives of 48 governments, declared that “a war of aggression constitutes . Those in lower ranks were protected against liability by the orders of their superiors. When I say that we do not ask for convictions unless we prove crime, I do not mean mere technical or incidental transgression of international conventions. But we will show you that looting was not due to the lack of discipline or to the ordinary weaknesses of human nature. The Nazi regime interrupted this advance. The “enterprise-Führer” should “make decisions for employees and laborers in all matters concerning the enterprise” (1861-PS). In the light of these materials of international law, and so far as relevant to the evidence in this case, I suggest that an “aggressor” is generally held to be that state which is the first to commit any of the following actions: (1) Declaration of war upon another state; (2) Invasion by its armed forces, with or without a declaration of war, of the territory of another state; (3) Attack by its land, naval, or air forces, with or without a declaration of war, on the territory, vessels or aircraft of another state; and. Hitler set September 30th as the day when troops should be ready for action. It says: ” … The first lieutenant explained that the police battalion had received the assignment to effect the liquidation of all Jews here in the town of Sluzk, within two days …. They also contemplated destroying or permanently weakening all other neighboring peoples so as to win virtual domination over Europe and probably of the world. These organizations early founded and administered concentration camps-Buchenwald in 1933, Dachau in 1934. leave no home in the world untouched. Special detachments reinforced by selected units-in Lithuania partisan detachments, in Latvia units of the Latvian auxiliary police-therefore performed extensive executions both in the towns and in rural areas. Robert Ley, the field marshal of the battle against labor, answered our Indictment with suicide. I will not prolong this address by detailing the steps leading to the war of aggression which began with the invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939. A number of additional Russians, whom he had also sent across, had been shot at the frontier.” (2195-PS), On September 27th, 1940 the Nazis concluded a German-Italian-Japanese 10-year military and economic alliance by which those powers agreed “to stand by and cooperate with one another in regard to their efforts in Greater East Asia and regions of Europe respectively wherein it is their prime purpose to establish and maintain a new order of things.”, On March 5, 1941 a top-secret directive was issued by Defendant Keitel. There was a time, in fact, I think the time of the first World War, when it could not have been said that war-inciting or war making was a crime in law, however reprehensible in morals. With the Party, its components, and attached units the Führer has created for himself and thereby the German Reich leadership an instrument which makes him independent of the church. That this is so will appear from many acts and statements, of which I cite but a few. They were planning the attack and planning it long in advance of the declaration of war. It is our task, so far as humanly possible, to, draw the line between the two. Its chain of command was military, and its formations were martial in name as well as in function. Prosecutor. Months before Jackson entered the courtroom of the trial at Nuremberg, he had worked through the rough draft of the opening statement to clearly articulate his acute sense of responsibility as a prosecutor and to exercise just the right tone of restraint. To do so, it was his decision that the trial be based on documentary evidence rather than eyewitness testimony. Share to Google Classroom. Men and women disappeared from their homes or business or from the streets, and no word came of them. The Nazi Party from its inception, however, contemplated war. We know it came to power by an evil alliance between the most extreme of the Nazi revolutionists, the most unrestrained of the German reactionaries, and the most aggressive of the German militarists. “The first main goal of the German measures must be strict segregation of Jewry from the rest of the population. A most intense drive was directed against the Roman Catholic Church. Nevertheless, these orders were put into effect. “This action eliminated,” says the SS commander, “a proved total of 56,065. For the first time in history we have to fight on only one front, the other front is at present free. But the ultimate step in avoiding periodic wars, which are inevitable in a system of international lawlessness, is to make statesmen responsible to law. Calling ahead to schedule a tour is highly encouraged. “Persons who have been deprived of their freedom must be informed at the latest on the following day by whose authority and for what reasons the deprivation of freedom was ordered; opportunity shall be afforded them without delay of submitting objections to their deprivation of freedom. The presence of many more or less closed Jewish settlements in White Ruthenia and in the Ukraine makes this mission easier. An example of the planning is shown by a report on France dated December 7, 1942 made by the Economic Research Department of the Reichsbank. They are to be placed in ghettos and at the same time are to be separated according to sexes. The Charter by which this Tribunal has its being, embodies certain legal concepts which are inseparable from its jurisdiction and which must govern its decision. The Charter also recognizes individual responsibility on the part of those who commit acts defined as crimes, or who incite others to do so, or who join a common. If I should recite these horrors in words of my own, you would think me intemperate and unreliable. We need not be hypocritical about this business of looting. These aggressions were met in the only way that they could be met, with instant declarations of war and with armed resistance which mounted slowly through many long months of reverses until finally the Axis was crushed to earth and deliverance for its victims was won.

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