Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg

Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg PDF Author: Francine Hirsch
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199377936
Category : LAW
Languages : en
Pages : 561

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Book Description
"Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg reveals the pivotal role the Soviet Union played in the Nuremberg Trials of 1945 and 1946. The Nuremberg Trials (IMT), most notable for their aim to bring perpetrators of Nazi war crimes to justice in the wake of World War II, paved the way for global conversations about genocide, justice, and human rights that continue to this day. As Francine Hirsch reveals in this new history of the trials, a central part of the story has been ignored or forgotten: the critical role the Soviet Union played in making them happen in the first place. While there were practical reasons for this omission--until recently, critical Soviet documents about Nuremberg were buried in the former Soviet archives, and even Russian researchers had limited access--Hirsch shows that there were political reasons as well. The Soviet Union was regarded by its wartime Allies not just as a fellow victor but a rival, and it was not in the interests of the Western powers to highlight the Soviet contribution to postwar justice"--

Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg

Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg PDF Author: Francine Hirsch
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199377936
Category : LAW
Languages : en
Pages : 561

Get Book Here

Book Description
"Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg reveals the pivotal role the Soviet Union played in the Nuremberg Trials of 1945 and 1946. The Nuremberg Trials (IMT), most notable for their aim to bring perpetrators of Nazi war crimes to justice in the wake of World War II, paved the way for global conversations about genocide, justice, and human rights that continue to this day. As Francine Hirsch reveals in this new history of the trials, a central part of the story has been ignored or forgotten: the critical role the Soviet Union played in making them happen in the first place. While there were practical reasons for this omission--until recently, critical Soviet documents about Nuremberg were buried in the former Soviet archives, and even Russian researchers had limited access--Hirsch shows that there were political reasons as well. The Soviet Union was regarded by its wartime Allies not just as a fellow victor but a rival, and it was not in the interests of the Western powers to highlight the Soviet contribution to postwar justice"--

Soviet Evidence at Nuremberg

Soviet Evidence at Nuremberg PDF Author: Carlos Whitlock Porter
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 48

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Book Description
THE KATYN FOREST MASSACRE: NOW YOU SEE IT, NOW YOU DON'T. How the Soviets Manufactured Fake German War Crimes for the Nuremberg Court. Document USSR-54 as presented at Nuremberg Translated from German by Carlos Whitlock Porter Checked against the original Russian.

Stalin's Soviet Justice

Stalin's Soviet Justice PDF Author: David M. Crowe
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350083364
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
From the 'show' trials of the 1920s and 1930s to the London Conference, this book examines the Soviet role in the Nuremberg IMT trial through the prism of the ideas and practices of earlier Soviet legal history, detailing the evolution of Stalin's ideas about the trail of Nazi war criminals. Stalin believed that an international trial for Nazi war criminals was the best way to show the world the sacrifices his country had made to defeat Hitler, and he, together with his legal mouthpiece Andrei Vyshinsky, maintained tight control over Soviet representatives during talks leading up to the creation of the Nuremberg IMT trial in 1945, and the trial itself. But Soviet prosecutors at Nuremberg were unable to deal comfortably with the complexities of an open, western-style legal proceeding, which undercut their effectiveness throughout the trial. However, they were able to present a significant body of evidence that underscored the brutal nature of Hitler's racial war in Russia from 1941-45, a theme which became central to Stalin's efforts to redefine international criminal law after the war. Stalin's Soviet Justice provides a nuanced analysis of the Soviet justice system at a crucial turning point in European history and it will be vital reading for scholars and advanced students of the legal history of the Soviet Union, the history of war crimes and the aftermath of the Second World War.

Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg

Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg PDF Author: Francine Hirsch
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199377952
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 432

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Book Description
Organized in the immediate aftermath of World War Two by the victorious Allies, the Nuremberg Trials were intended to hold the Nazis to account for their crimes and to restore a sense of justice to a world devastated by violence. As Francine Hirsch reveals in this immersive, gripping, and ground-breaking book, a major piece of the Nuremberg story has routinely been omitted from standard accounts: the part the Soviet Union played in making the trials happen in the first place. Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg offers the first complete picture of the International Military Tribunal (IMT), including the many ironies brought to bear as the Soviets took their place among the countries of the prosecution in late 1945. Everyone knew that Stalin had allied with Hitler before the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact hung heavy over the courtroom, as did the suspicion that the Soviets had falsified evidence in an attempt to pin one of their own war crimes, the mass killing of Polish officers in the Katyn Forest, on the Nazis. Moreover, key members of the Soviet delegation, including the Soviet judge and chief prosecutor, had played critical roles in Stalin's infamous show trials of the 1930s. For the American prosecutor Robert H. Jackson and his colleagues in the British and French delegations, Soviet participation in the IMT undermined the credibility of the trials and indeed the moral righteousness of the Allied victory. Yet without the Soviets Nuremberg would never have taken place. Soviet jurists conceived of the legal framework that treated war as an international crime, giving the trials a legal basis. The Soviets had borne the brunt of the fighting against Germany, and their almost unimaginable suffering gave them moral authority. They would not be denied a place on the tribunal and moreover were determined to make the most of it. However, little went as the Soviets had planned. Stalin's efforts to steer the trials from afar backfired. Soviet war crimes were exposed in open court. As relations among the four countries of the prosecution foundered, Nuremberg turned from a court of justice to an early front of the Cold War. Hirsch's book provides a front-row seat in the Nuremberg courtroom, while also guiding readers behind the scenes to the meetings in which secrets were shared, strategies mapped, and alliances forged. Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg offers a startlingly new view of the IMT and a fresh perspective on the movement for international human rights that it helped launch.

Tyranny on Trial

Tyranny on Trial PDF Author: Whitney R. Harris
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 700

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Book Description


Made in Russia

Made in Russia PDF Author: Carlos Whitlock Porter
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781648580147
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 430

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Book Description
A stumbling block for Revisionists, just as it was for the post-war German defendants, is the seeming wealth of documents and testimony assembled by Allied prosecutors for the Nuremberg trials. The more than sixty volumes of trial material which appeared in the wake of the "Trial of the Major War Criminals" and twelve subsequent trials before the (American) Nuremberg Military Tribunal have for many years supplied a massive compilation of apparently damning evidence against Germany's National Socialist regime. Most Exterminationists, academic and lay, believe that Germany's "aggression" in beginning the war, and the numerous atrocities and war crimes laid to the German account, above all the alleged Holocaust of European Jewry, are amply documented in the so-called "Nuremberg record".

The Betrayal

The Betrayal PDF Author: Kim Christian Priemel
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192563742
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 496

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Book Description
At the end of World War II the Allies faced a threefold challenge: how to punish perpetrators of appalling crimes for which the categories of 'genocide' and 'crimes against humanity' had to be coined; how to explain that these had been committed by Germany, of all nations; and how to reform Germans. The Allied answer to this conundrum was the application of historical reasoning to legal procedure. In the thirteen Nuremberg trials held between 1945 and 1949, and in corresponding cases elsewhere, a concerted effort was made to punish key perpetrators while at the same time providing a complex analysis of the Nazi state and German history. Building on a long debate about Germany's divergence from a presumed Western path of development, Allied prosecutors sketched a historical trajectory which had led Germany to betray the Western model. Historical reasoning both accounted for the moral breakdown of a 'civilised' nation and rendered plausible arguments that this had indeed been a collective failure rather than one of a small criminal clique. The prosecutors therefore carefully laid out how institutions such as private enterprise, academic science, the military, or bureaucracy, which looked ostensibly similar to their opposite numbers in the Allied nations, had been corrupted in Germany even before Hitler's rise to power. While the argument, depending on individual protagonists, subject matters, and contexts, met with uneven success in court, it offered a final twist which was of obvious appeal in the Cold War to come: if Germany had lost its way, it could still be brought back into the Western fold. The first comprehensive study of the Nuremberg trials, The Betrayal thus also explores how history underpins transitional trials as we encounter them in today's courtrooms from Arusha to The Hague.

Moscow's Road to Nuremberg

Moscow's Road to Nuremberg PDF Author: George Ginsburgs
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004634460
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 164

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Book Description
Recent events in former Yugoslavia and Rwanda have revived diplomatic interest in measures contemplating concerted action directed at the suppression and punishment of war crimes. Indeed, steps have already been initiated to set up war crimes tribunals to prosecute those responsible for such atrocities. Not to be outdone, Yeltsin's Foreign Minister has also issued a call for public discussion of the idea of `creating a system of international criminal justice with regard to crimes against peace and humanity, other international violations of the law.' The precedents of the Second World War in this venue thus seem relevant once again. Since the Soviet Union played a leading role in paving the way for the Nuremberg trial and respective proceedings before national tribunals, and Russia - as self-proclaimed heir and successor to the USSR - continues to exercise a great deal of influence in these matters today, a look at Moscow's doctrinal and practical scorecard may prove useful for future reference. The present study explores the Soviet regime's contribution to the prehistory of the Nuremberg trial, i.e., the repertory of official acts and pronouncements as well as scholarly treatment of issues which ultimately shaped the legal complexion of the Nuremberg test. Our focus in this case is on the mode of development of the style and substance of the bill of indictment until the day of the court's opening session from the standpoint of Moscow's stake in the operation. The views recorded during the trial in primary or secondary sources or those expressed later are taken into account only if they shed light on the preparatory stages of the drama. The subsequent evolution of Moscow's thoughts on the subject deserves a separate full-scale analysis.

Made in Russia

Made in Russia PDF Author: Carlos Porter
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781471721380
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 417

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Book Description
Many people consider the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials as final evidence of German guilt during World War II. This book reproduces the actual International Military Tribunal (IMT) documents used in that trial, revealing an astonishing concoction of forgerie

Hitler's Generals on Trial

Hitler's Generals on Trial PDF Author: Valerie Geneviève Hébert
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700632670
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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Book Description
By prosecuting war crimes, the Nuremberg trials sought to educate West Germans about their criminal past, provoke their total rejection of Nazism, and convert them to democracy. More than all of the other Nuremberg proceedings, the High Command Case against fourteen of Hitler's generals embraced these goals, since the charges-the murder of POWs, the terrorizing of civilians, the extermination of Jews-also implicated the 20 million ordinary Germans who had served in the military. This trial was the true test of Nuremberg's potential to inspire national reflection on Nazi crime. Its importance notwithstanding, the High Command Case has been largely neglected by historians. Valerie Hébert's study—the only book in English on the subject—draws extensively on the voluminous trial records to reconstruct these proceedings in full: prosecution and defense strategies; evidence for and against the defendants and the military in general; the intricacies of the judgment; and the complex legal issues raised, such as the defense of superior orders, military necessity, and command responsibility. Crucially, she also examines the West German reaction to the trial and the intense debate over its fairness and legitimacy, ignited by the sentencing of soldiers who were seen by the public as having honorably defended their country. Hébert argues that the High Command Trial was itself a success, producing eleven guilty verdicts along with an incontrovertible record of the German military's crimes. But, viewing the trial from beyond the courtroom, she also contends that it made no lasting imprint on the German public's consciousness. And because the United States was eager to secure West Germany as an ally in the Cold War, American officials eventually consented to parole and clemency programs for all of the convicted officers, so that by the late 1950s not one remained imprisoned. Superbly researched and impeccably told, Hitler's Generals on Trial addresses fundamental questions concerning the meaning of justice after atrocity and genocide, the moral imperative of punishment for these crimes, the link between justice and memory, and the relevance of the Nuremberg trials for transitional justice processes today. Inasmuch as these trials coined the vocabulary of modern international criminal law and set an agenda for transitional justice that remains in place today, Hébert's book marks a major contribution to military and legal history.