A Remarkable Judicial Event
O'NEILL, WILLIAM L.
A Remarkable Judicial Event_ The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials By Telford Taylor Knopf. 703 pp. $35.00. Reviewed by William L. O'Neill Professor of history, Rutgers; author, "American...
...Jackson opened with a masterly address that Taylor believes set a high standard for the trials...
...Nonetheless, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison...
...Given these arbitrary sentences, can one conclude that justice was done at Nuremberg...
...This leaves the reader confused as to what was really important about the trial, rhetoric or substance...
...Still, it is good to have Taylor's account of the remarkable judicial event...
...Yet in summing up the prosecutor's performance, Taylor says that despite his errors "Jackson worked and wrote with deep passion and spoke in winged words...
...Since Nuremberg was in the American Zone of Occupation, the U.S...
...Julius Streicher, a publisher of anti-Semitic filth, described as the "least appetizing" of the defendants by Taylor, had no voice in Nazi affairs and starting in 1940 was under house arrest for having belittled Goering's sexual powers...
...Taylor makes clear the random course that justice ultimately took...
...Historians will look forward to his next volume, in which he proposes to deal with the later cases he tried as chief prosecutor...
...Because of his inattention to important preparatory matters and his eagerness to convict German industrialists for complicity in Hitler's crimes, Jackson let stand an indictment of Gustav Krupp as a foremost merchant of death...
...His reason is Nuremberg's establishing for the first time that the initiation of aggressive war is an offense under international law...
...He was executed as well...
...A conscientious and honorable man, he has served the country well—at Nuremberg, throughout his career, and with his new book...
...Such detail does not make for an exciting read...
...Many national leaders have initiated aggressive wars since 1946, when the Tribunal rendered its verdicts, yet no one has gone to trial for doing so...
...His cross-examination of Goering was weak...
...He was not one of those who planned the war of aggression, a major Nuremberg charge, nor had he ordered any war crimes committed...
...This does not seem good enough to me...
...Certainly Goering and other arch-criminals deserved to die...
...There was no one else who could have done that half as well as he...
...Gustav had become incompetent, however, and from 1943 on, when most of the exploitation of concentration camp and slave labor occurred, the firm was actually run by his son Alfried...
...But Admiral Karl Doenitz, Germany's Uboat commander during most of the War and for the last two weeks of the Third Reich its chief of state, should never have been indicted...
...This volume is about the first and most famous trial, which brought Hermann Goering and 23 other key figures of Hitler's regime before the bar of justice...
...My hope is that he will unbend somewhat and give us a less austere rendering of what took place...
...Taylor clearly means it to be the book of record on those proceedings...
...The book would have benefited, too, from a fuller and more candid account of the role played by Associate Justice Robert H. Jackson of the Supreme Court, appointed by President Harry S. Truman to be the first chief prosecutor...
...Owing to this "fiasco," as Taylor calls it, Alfried escaped prosecution at Nuremberg and regained control of Krupp...
...Thus he carefully reviews the legal issues, describes at length how each was resolved, and gives his own views about the degree of the prisoners' guilt and the appropriateness of their sentences...
...It appears unlikely that anyone ever will either, barring a repeat of the unique circumstances that obtained after World War II...
...Taylor says yes, despite his disagreeing with the disposition of particular cases...
...author, "American High: The Years of Confidence, 1945-1960" Telford Taylor is a distinguished attorney and legal scholar who has written many books, including Munich: The Price of Peace, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for nonaction in 1979...
...But until now he has never told the story of his participation in the Nuremberg trials?initially as a senior member of the prosecution staff, and subsequently as chief prosecutor for the International Military Tribunal...
...But his handling of the prosecution was seriously flawed...
...He persisted in trying to charge the General Staff and High Command of the German Armed Forces with collective guilt for the Wehrmacht's war crimes, a dubious effort in Taylor's estimation that eventually collapsed...
...Army provided support for the trials and Jackson, who had been given a free hand by Truman, enjoyed immense authority...
...Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel ordered civilians massacred in Hitler's name, but so did many other senior officers who, unlike him, were not sentenced to death...
...Jackson made other mistakes...
...More than anyone else, he set the ground rules for the unprecedented legal exercise...
...Although all the defendants had been Nazis, the extent of their involvement in Hitler's atrocities varied...
...others will wish more attention had been paid to personalities...
...Historians will appreciate the meticulous narrative...
Vol. 76 • January 1993 • No. 1
