In May 1945, Jackson gathered a staff of willing government and/or military lawyers capable of compiling material for the international tribunal. The United States legal staff numbered 200 people, which was larger than the other three nation’s staffs combined. 1835 Many of the lawyers had already expended efforts on potential war crimes. Bernays, Jackson’s executive officer, collaborated with the attorneys from the JAG and from the OSS. Truman allowed Jackson to enlist the efforts of William J. Donovan, the head of the OSS, to serve as his deputy. Jackson also recruited Francis Shea, Assistant Attorney General, Sidney S. Alderman, Colonel Telford Taylor, Commander Sidney J. Kaplan and other lawyers. Jackson even added his son, Ensign William E. Jackson, as his executive assistant. 1836
In early May 1945, Alderman obtained and quickly read Lemkin’s book, Axis Rule. Bernays, already very familiar with Lemkin’s goals, used his concepts and planned to employ them during the prosecution. He devised two documents to present to Jackson and his legal staff. His eleven-page document, Planning Memorandum, claimed that the Allies had adequate evidence of the atrocities committed by the Germans. He said that, in their unlawful wars of aggression, they had participated in crimes against racial minorities and had starved them, denied them of sufficient clothing, shelter, fuel, sanitation, and medical care. Bernays also accused Germany of deporting these populations for forced labor under the most brutal conditions. On May 16, Jackson and his legal staff, after evaluating the document, added Lemkin’s term ‘genocide.’ 1837
On May 18, 1945, Brigadier General John M. Weir introduced Lemkin to Alderman, who was impressed with Lemkin’s book and thought it was “very comprehensive” in that it perfectly detailed genocide as “the deliberate attempt to extinguish whole races of people, referring to the German attempt to extinguish the Jews of Eastern Europe. I immediately saw that he was very proud of this work.” 1838
On May 26, Shea invited Jackson to a meeting to discuss the problems with the staff lawyers who were not associated with the OSS. Officials had assigned the OSS the task of collecting evidence in preparation for the tribunal. Shea and Alderman asked Lemkin, who had maintained contact with Jackson’s office, to oversee the OSS group even though Lemkin failed to comprehend the legal aspects of the case. Nevertheless, on May 28, he joined General Weir’s staff in the JAG Corps War Crimes office. Colonel Taylor and Commander Kaplan relegated him to a puppet position in the War Crimes office where he remained in contact with Jackson’s staff. Taylor supervised all activities at the Pentagon when Jackson, Alderman and others left for London. The four powers accepted the Planning Memorandum and implemented its policies in the London Agreement. 1839
From the start World War II, Harvard Professor Sheldon Glueck, a Jew, had considered the various ways in which to address Axis criminals on war crimes in general, by attributing all of the blame for the war onto Germany, to allegedly prevent future war crimes. Newsweek columnist, Raymond Moley wrote an article, Punishing War Criminals, dated December 11, 1944, in which he applauds Glueck’s book War Criminals. 1840 In June 1945, Glueck accompanied Jackson as an advisor in the negotiations for a four-power agreement in London. Jackson, as the chief counsel for the United States, was to conceal culpability on the part of the Allies and other parties. 1841 Jackson, in his negotiations with the British, French and Soviet allies, promoted the Bernays’ Planning Memorandum which he distributed. Pell, Stimson, and Morgenthau, and their ideology regarding domestic policy influenced Jackson in the development of the London Charter.
In 1942, the State Department and CFR members, under the auspices of the Advisory Committee on Postwar Foreign Policy, had collaborated in setting up the United Nations (UN) to replace the League of Nations. 1842 Cordell Hull assigned Alger Hiss to assemble a group of other CFR members to draft the UN Charter. The group was composed of Dean Acheson, Harry Dexter White, Owen Lattimore, Frank Coe, Noel Field, Victor Perlo, and Nathan G. Silvermaster and others. The UN Charter displaced the U.S. Constitution. 1843 White, Coe, Perlo and Silvermaster and, of course, Hiss were all Soviet agents. 1844
In August 1943, FDR presented the draft of the UN charter at the Quebec Conference where Churchill and Eden accepted it. On November 1, in Moscow, delegates from America, Britain, China, and the Soviet Union accepted the UN Charter which obligated these nations to coordinate their war objectives and to create the UN, an international entity. 1845 Stalin allied with America on the condition that the United States cooperated in the creation of the UN in which Stalin had three votes, while the United States had one. The UN charter is a constitution for world government. 1846 It takes precedence over state law as ruled by a California court in 1950. 1847 Communists instigated the creation of the UN and drafted its charter. Now the UN directed the prosecution and lynching of the country, Germany that had attempted to destroy Communism.
Robert Falco, a Jew, and an alternative Judge at the tribunal for France, and Iona Nikichenko, who presided over some of Stalin’s show trials, a member of the European Advisory Commission, and Jackson were the three main architects of the London Charter, dated August 8, 1945, under the jurisdiction of the UN, officially created on June 26, 1945. 1848 They developed the charter under the authority of the Moscow Declaration, the Declaration on German Atrocities in Occupied Europe, which Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin published on November 1, 1943. It served as a warning to the Germans that at war’s end; the Allies intended to “pursue them to the uttermost ends of the earth… in order that justice may be done.” 1849
For propaganda purposes and to invoke Austrian victimization and to spawn an Austrian resistance movement, the allies created the Declaration on Austria, dated October 30, 1943 as follows, “The Government of the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and the United States of America are agreed that Austria, the first free country to fall victim to Hitlerite aggression, shall be liberated from German domination. They regard the annexation imposed upon Austria by Germany on March 15, 1938 as null and void. They consider themselves in no way bound by any changes effected in Austria since that date. They declare that they wish to see reestablished a free and independent Austria, and thereby to open the way for the Austrian people themselves, to find that political and economic security which is the only basis for lasting peace. Austria is reminded, however, that she has a responsibility which she cannot evade for participation in the war on the side of Hitlerite Germany, and that in the final settlement account will inevitably be taken of her own contribution to her liberation.” 1850
The delegates from Britain, France, the Soviet Union and America concluded their meeting with an official agreement. In addition to America’s version of the Malmédy Massacre and on the basis of the claim that the Germans murdered the Polish officers in the Katyn forest, now known to be false, Nikichenko and others signed the London Agreement. The International Military Tribunal was the outcome of the negotiations. 1851 The delegates signed the Charter of the International Military Tribunal (IMT) “for the trial and punishment of the major war criminals of the European Axis countries.” It defined the specific crimes:
Crimes against Peace: “namely, planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances, or participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the foregoing.” 1852
War Crimes: “violations of the laws or customs of war; Such violations shall include, but not be limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation to slave labor or for any other purpose of civilian population of or in occupied territory, murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war or persons on the seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity.” 1853
Crimes against Humanity: “namely, murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population, before or during the war; or persecutions on politic
al, racial or religious grounds in execution of or in connection with any crime within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal, whether or not in violation of the domestic law of the country where perpetrated.” 1854
On May 25, 1945, Professor Aron Trainin, a Soviet representative at the London Conference, and an expert on international law, had stated that it was acceptable to deport millions of Germans to the Soviet gulags for use as slave labor. The delegates used Trainin’s book, Hitlerite Responsibility under Criminal Law at Nuremberg. Between 200,000 and 300,000 corpses were uncovered in the Darnica Forest near Kiev, all victims of 1930s Soviet brutality. They slaughtered as many as a million people in eastern Poland (1939-1941). The Soviets perpetuated vicious lies, that Germany had committed the murders at Katyn, until the Yeltsin regime provided revelatory documents to the Polish government on October 14, 1992.1855
After officials signed the London Agreement, Colonel Bernays invited Raphael Lemkin to London, along with all of the documents he had collected. However, Commander James Donovan of the OSS objected to having Lemkin assigned to London because he believed that, despite the popularity of his book, its scholarship was insufficient. Donovan thought that he had used a lot of emotionally-charged data in his work. Bernays, with approval from higher up, ignored Donovan and brought Lemkin to London in late August, where he would work under his supervision. However, Bernays quickly left London and his position on Jackson’s staff even before Lemkin arrived. Perhaps Bernays felt he had accomplished his objectives. Lemkin remained in London and worked, under the supervision of Colonel Taylor. Meanwhile, Shea ordered several reference copies of Lemkin’s book. 1856
Lemkin told Jackson’s staff that he had a significant amount of evidence about the atrocities perpetrated in Poland, proof that officials had placed in a Warsaw repository then under Soviet control. Jackson introduced Lemkin to Nikichenko. Nothing of importance resulted, suggesting that his evidence was non-existent. Lemkin, while in London, met with officials of the UNWCC, and with Chaim Weizmann, Stephen S. Wise, and Moshe Sharett, who would become Israel’s second Prime Minister. Lemkin’s interaction with members of the UNWCC and JAG and his heightened sense of importance became a source of great irritation to others on Jackson’s staff. William R. Hodgson, the Brit who helped draft the US’s founding documents, complained that Lemkin was divulging information about war crimes to the press. He wanted him out of London but he managed to remain and continue to annoy Alderman, who was working, with the British on the draft of the Nuremberg Indictment in September and October 1945. 1857
Lt. Colonel Benjamin Kaplan was one of the architects of the Nuremberg Indictment. His key role was the accumulation of evidentiary documents. His association in Washington began when his law partner, Edward Greenbaum became an executive officer to the under-secretary of war, Robert Patterson. Kaplan then accepted a position next door to Colonel R. Ammi Cutter, a Boston lawyer. Cutter and John J. McCloy were early advocates of a war crimes trial. They recruited Kaplan in late May 1945, commissioning him an officer, on Jackson’s staff. 1858
Kaplan worked with Taylor, a New Deal lawyer. Kaplan, although enthusiastic about Jackson’s intentions, was concerned about his negligence and need to acquire valid evidence. Jackson assigned Taylor and Kaplan to lead a group of prosecutors to search relevant files in Washington while Jackson and his colleagues went to London. Kaplan spent a month combing through OSS files but found nothing worthwhile. Kaplan went to London in early August to help Jackson promote the critical “conspiracy” charge, a controversial term in international law and very hard to apply to Nazi aggression. Kaplan did not stay on as a prosecutor but left Nuremberg in December 1945. He worked closely with prosecutor Sidney J. Kaplan (unrelated) to draft much of the conspiracy count, and develop legal strategies for additional charges. 1859 In 1947, Kaplan would join the Harvard faculty. Two of his students were Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer. Cass Sunstein was one of his law clerks when Kaplan was a judge on the Massachusetts Supreme Court. After Kaplan’s death in 2010, Justice Ginsburg told The Globe, “He was the greatest teacher I ever had.”1860
Jackson insisted that the tribunal prosecute the Wehrmacht leadership. Taylor and others were dubious. Yet, they had devised organizational charges as a method of prosecuting such entities, like the SS, because it would be more difficult to prove the activities of individual members. If the tribunal could incriminate the high command and its senior staff, using the conspiracy charge, it might work. Kaplan and two other lawyers pressured Jackson for revisions but he would not budge. Ultimately, the indictment retained the theory of an expansive conspiracy to use against the high command. 1861
On November 20, 1945, Alderman read the charging 100-page indictment in the first session of the International Military Tribunal (IMT) at Nuremberg. On October 17, 1946, Taylor took over for Jackson as Chief Counsel for the remaining twelve trials before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals (NMT). The British participants were G.D. Roberts and Peter Calvocoressi, an intelligence officer at Bletchley Park. Alderman, to satisfy Lemkin, included the word “genocide” in the final draft of the document. 1862
On November 1, 1978, President Jimmy Carter, appointed Elie Wiesel as chairman of the newly-created thirty-four member Commission on the Holocaust, which began its operations on January 15, 1979, to evaluate “the establishment and maintenance of an appropriate memorial to those who perished in the Holocaust.” 1863 Taylor, the former chief prosecutor, for twenty-eight months at the Nuremberg Military Tribunals, was a member of the Commission on the Holocaust.
Lemkin lobbied for the acceptance of the UN Genocide Convention at the end of the war. On December 11, 1946, the UN General Assembly declared genocide a crime under international law. On December 9, 1947, the UN officially adopted the Genocide Treaty. On December 9, 1948, the UN General Assembly adopted the text of the Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The UN obtained the required twenty ratifications which enabled them to enforce General Assembly Resolution 260 on January 12, 1951. 1864 After years, the Senate ratified the Genocide Treaty on October 14, 1988. President Ronald Reagan, under pressure from influential Jews, signed it on November 4, 1988 during the Genocide Treaty Signing Ceremony in Chicago, a city with a large Jewish population. On December 9, the United States ratified the treaty and it became the law of the land. This satisfied the vow that Harry S. Truman made to the world’s Jewish population. The ratification altered the U.S. Criminal Code, making genocide a Federal offense with a maximum penalty of life imprisonment when any criminal act results in death. 1865
Nuremberg, the Victors’ Vengeance
Beginning in the summer of 1932, during the “peaceful” Weimar Republic, and to divert attention from the grave consequences of the depression, Winston Churchill and his cohorts initiated their hateful anti-German propaganda campaign, claiming that Germany was a danger to the world, and was arming for war. He used phrases that supported what those who had developed the intellectual and legal foundation had said about the necessity for “international law.” 1866 In 1937, the League of Nations, in an effort to institutionalize criminal proceedings, adopted the Convention against Terrorism. In 1920, the Professor Vespasian V. Pella had introduced the idea of a permanent International Criminal Tribunal, to be associated with the Permanent Court of International Justice, which achieved fruition in 1935. 1867 The Permanent Court of International Justice “must have power to adjudicate upon all international crimes and offenses,” . . . and have jurisdiction “over all international offenses committed by individuals.”1868
Eisenhower said, “The ringleaders and the SS troops should be given the death penalty without question, but punishment should not end there.” Later he said, “The German people must not be allowed to escape a personal sense of guilt for the terrible tragedy that had engulfed the world.” He felt that official tribunals should punish certain groups, top Nazis, Gestapo and SS members. He reiterated, “The German General Staff
should be utterly eliminated. All records destroyed and individuals scattered and rendered powerless to operate as a body.” 1869
On January 31, 1944, Ziff-Davis published Louis Nizer’s book, What to Do with Germany, which promoted the mass murder of several hundred thousand Germans throughout the country. Vice President Henry A. Wallace and Senators Harry S. Truman and Claude Pepper endorsed the book. George Creel, the director of propaganda in World War I, wrote an article for Collier’s Magazine, Revenge in Poland, dated October 30, 1943, promoting civilian atrocities against the German occupiers in Poland. He wrote the Army Field Manual FM 27-10, The Law of Land Warfare. He claimed that his influence was responsible for the deaths of 800 German soldiers by June, 1943, and the destruction of seventeen German trains. He wrote War Criminals and Punishment in which he expanded on his views, urging the immediate shooting of Hitler and others, without any expensive, lengthy trials. Creel applauded the Bolshevik trials with their quick executions, and thought that America should follow suit. 1870
In mid-summer, 1944, Sumner Welles published Time for Decision, promoting the idea that FDR, Churchill and Stalin could function as the God of wrath but questioned whether they should. Stanley Hornbeck, of the State Department, in an article in The Nation, dated October 14, 1944, thought that the Allies should apply the transformative Morgenthau Plan to Japan as well. Major George Eliot, in Look magazine, dated January 23, 1945, agreed in his article, Let’s Destroy Japan. He called for an even greater destruction for Japan, because of their “day of infamy.” Ernest Lindley, in Newsweek, dated October 2, 1944, wrote Planning Postwar Germany: Behind the Scenes. 1871
The Ruling Elite Page 66
