Mr. Stewart basically told me that it's much too narrative (which I knew), and that it doesn't answer the question at all. I know everything I want to include in the essay now, I just haven't finished articulating it into the shape of an essay yet!
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
My first essay draft
I've been hesitant on scanning this because I realise that it's absolutely horrible and hardly even looks like an essay, very "blah".
Mr. Stewart basically told me that it's much too narrative (which I knew), and that it doesn't answer the question at all. I know everything I want to include in the essay now, I just haven't finished articulating it into the shape of an essay yet!
Mr. Stewart basically told me that it's much too narrative (which I knew), and that it doesn't answer the question at all. I know everything I want to include in the essay now, I just haven't finished articulating it into the shape of an essay yet!
Saturday, September 4, 2010
Appendix 1: Trial transcript, 21 November 1945: Robert Jackson’s opening speech for the prosecution
May it please Your Honours:
The privilege of opening the first trial in history for crimes against the peace of the world imposes a grave responsibility. The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant, and so devastating, that civilisation cannot tolerate their being ignored, because it cannot survive their being repeated. That four great nations, flushed with victory and stung with injury stay the hand of vengeance and voluntarily submit their captive enemies to the judgement of the law is one of the most significant tributes that Power has ever paid to reason.
This tribunal, while it is novel and experimental, is not the product of abstract speculations nor is it created to vindicate legalistic theories. This inquest represents the practical effort of four of the most mighty of nations, with the support of seventeen more, to utilise international law to meet the greatest menace of our times - aggressive war. The common sense of mankind demands that law shall not stop with the punishment of petty crimes by the little people. 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 leave no home in the world untouched. It is a cause of that magnitude that the United Nations will lay before Your Honours.
In the prisoners’ dock sit twenty-odd broken men. Reproached by the humiliation of those they have led almost as bitterly as by the desolation of those they have attacked, their personal capacity for evil is forever past. It is hard now to perceive in these men as captives the power by which as Nazi leaders they once dominated much of the world and terrified most of it. Merely as individuals their fate is of little consequence to the world.
What makes this inquest significant is that these prisoners represent sinister influences that will lurk in the world long after their bodies have returned to dust. We will show them to be living symbols of racial hatreds, of terrorism and violence, and of the arrogance and cruelty of power. 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. They have so identified themselves with the philosophies they conceived and with the forces they directed that any tenderness to them is a victory and an encouragement to all the evils which are attached to their names. Civilisation can afford no compromise with the social forces which would gain renewed strength if we deal ambiguously or indecisively with the men in whom those forces now precariously survive.
What these men stand for we will patiently and temperately disclose. We will give you undeniable proofs of incredible events. The catalogue of crimes will omit nothing that could be conceived by a pathological pride, cruelty, and lust for power. These men created in Germany, under the Führerprinzip, a National Socialist despotism equalled only by the dynasties of the ancient East. They took from the German people all those dignities and freedoms that we hold natural and inalienable rights in every human being. The people were compensated by inflaming and gratifying hatreds towards those who were marked as ‘scapegoats’. Against their opponents, including Jews, Catholics, and free labour, the Nazis directed such a campaign of arrogance, brutality and annihilation as the world has not witnessed since the pre-Christian ages. They excited as the German ambition to be a ‘master race’, which of course implies serfdom for others. They led their people on a mad gamble for domination. They diverted social energies and resources to the creation of what they thought to be an invincible war machine. They overran their neighbours. To sustain the ‘master race’ in its war-making, they enslaved millions of human beings and brought them into Germany, where these hapless creatures now wander as ‘displaced persons’. At length bestiality and bad faith reached such excess that they aroused the sleeping strength of imperilled Civilisation. Its united efforts have ground the German war machine to fragments. But the struggle has left Europe a liberated yet prostrate land where a demoralised society struggles to survive. These are the fruits of the sinister forces that sit with the defendants in the prisoners’ dock.
In justice to the nations and the men associated in this prosecution, I must remind you of certain difficulties which may leave their mark on this face. Never before in legal history has an effort been made to bring within the scope of a single litigation the developments of a decade, covering a whole continent, and involving a score of nations, countless individuals, and innumerable events. Despite the magnitude of the task, the world has demanded immediate action. This demand has had to be met, though perhaps at the cost of finished craftsmanship. To my courtesy, established courts, following familiar procedures, applying well-thumbed precedents, and dealing with the legal consequences of local and limited events, seldom commence a trial within a year of the event in litigation. Yet less than eight months ago today the courtroom in which you sit was an enemy fortress in the hands of German SS troops. Less than eight months ago nearly all our witnesses and documents were in enemy hands. The law had not been codified, no procedures had been established, no Tribunal was in existence, no usable courthouse stood here, none of the hundreds of tons of official German documents had been examined, no prosecuting staff had been assembled, nearly all of the present defendants were at large, and the four prosecuting powers had not yet joined in common cause to try them. I should be the last to deny that the case may well suffer from incomplete researches and quite likely will not be the example of professional work which any of the prosecuting nations would normally wish to sponsor. It is, however, a completely adequate case to the judgement we shall ask you to render, and its full development we shall be obliged to leave to historians …
Unfortunately, the nature of these crimes is such that both prosecution and judgement must be by victor nations over vanquished foes. The worldwide scope of the aggressions carried out by these men has left but few real neutrals. Either the victors must judge the vanquished or we must leave the defeated to judge themselves. After the First World War, we learned the futility of the latter course. The former high station of these defendants, the notoriety of their acts, and the adaptability of their conduct provoke retaliation make it hard to distinguish between the demand for a just and measured retribution, and the unthinking cry for vengeance which arises from the anguish of war. It is our task, so far as humanly possible, to draw the line between the two. We must never forget that the records on which history will judge us tomorrow. To pass these defendants a poisoned chalice is to put it tour own lips as well. We must summon such detachment and intellectual integrity to our task that this trial will commend itself to posterity as fulfilling humanity’s aspirations to do justice…
It may well be that these men of troubled conscience, whose only wish is that the world forget them, do not regard a trial as a favour. But they do have a fair opportunity to defend themselves - a favour which these man, when in power, rarely extended to their fellow countrymen. Despite the fact that public opinion already condemns their acts, we agree that here they must be given a presumption of innocence, and we accept the burden of proving criminal acts and the responsibility of these defendants for their commission.
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. We charge guilt on planned and intended conduct that involves moral as well as legal wrong. And we do not mean conduct that is a natural and human, even if illegal, cutting of corners, such as many of us might well have committed had we been in the defendants’ positions. It is not because they yielded to the normal frailties of human beings that we accuse them. It is their abnormal and inhuman conduct which brings them to this bar.
We will not ask you to convict these men on the testimony of their foes. There is no count in the indictment that cannot be proved by books and records. The Germans were always meticulous record keepers, and these defendants had their share of the Teutonic passion for thoroughness in putting things on paper. Nor were they without vanity. They arranged frequently to be photographed in action. We will show you their own films. You will see their own conduct and hear their own voices as these defendants re-enact for you, from the screen, some of the events in the course of the conspiracy.
We would also make clear that we have no purpose to incriminate the whole German people. We know that the Nazi Party was not put in power by a majority of the German vote … The German, no less than the non-German world, has accounts to settle with these defendants …
The war did not just happen - it was palnned and prepared for over a long period of time and with no small skill and cunning. The world has perhaps never seen such a concentration and stimulation of the energies of any people as that which enabled Germany twenty years after it was defeated, disarmed, and dismembered to come so near carrying out its plan to dominate Europe. Whatever else we may say of those who were the authors of this war, they did achieve a stupendous work in organisation, and our first task is to examine the means by which these defendants and their fellow conspirators prepared and incited Germany to go to war.
In general, our case will disclose these defendants al uniting at some time with the Nazi Party in a plan which they well knew could be accomplished only by an outbreak of war in Europe. Their seizure of the German State, their subjugation of the German people, their terrorism and extermination of dissident elements, their planning and waging of war, their calculated and planned ruthlessness in the conduct of warfare, their deliberate and planned criminality toward conquered peoples - all these are ends for which they acted in concert; and all these are phases of the conspiracy, a conspiracy which reached one goal only to set out for another and more ambitious one …
The case presented by the United States will be concerned with the brains and authority back of all the crimes. These defendants were men of a station and rank which does not soil its own hands with blood. They were men who knew how to use lesser folk as tools. We ant to reach the planners and designers, the inciters and leaders without whose evil architecture the world would not have been for so long scourged with the violence and the lawlessness, and wracked with the agonies and convulsions, of this terrible war.
The privilege of opening the first trial in history for crimes against the peace of the world imposes a grave responsibility. The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant, and so devastating, that civilisation cannot tolerate their being ignored, because it cannot survive their being repeated. That four great nations, flushed with victory and stung with injury stay the hand of vengeance and voluntarily submit their captive enemies to the judgement of the law is one of the most significant tributes that Power has ever paid to reason.
This tribunal, while it is novel and experimental, is not the product of abstract speculations nor is it created to vindicate legalistic theories. This inquest represents the practical effort of four of the most mighty of nations, with the support of seventeen more, to utilise international law to meet the greatest menace of our times - aggressive war. The common sense of mankind demands that law shall not stop with the punishment of petty crimes by the little people. 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 leave no home in the world untouched. It is a cause of that magnitude that the United Nations will lay before Your Honours.
In the prisoners’ dock sit twenty-odd broken men. Reproached by the humiliation of those they have led almost as bitterly as by the desolation of those they have attacked, their personal capacity for evil is forever past. It is hard now to perceive in these men as captives the power by which as Nazi leaders they once dominated much of the world and terrified most of it. Merely as individuals their fate is of little consequence to the world.
What makes this inquest significant is that these prisoners represent sinister influences that will lurk in the world long after their bodies have returned to dust. We will show them to be living symbols of racial hatreds, of terrorism and violence, and of the arrogance and cruelty of power. 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. They have so identified themselves with the philosophies they conceived and with the forces they directed that any tenderness to them is a victory and an encouragement to all the evils which are attached to their names. Civilisation can afford no compromise with the social forces which would gain renewed strength if we deal ambiguously or indecisively with the men in whom those forces now precariously survive.
What these men stand for we will patiently and temperately disclose. We will give you undeniable proofs of incredible events. The catalogue of crimes will omit nothing that could be conceived by a pathological pride, cruelty, and lust for power. These men created in Germany, under the Führerprinzip, a National Socialist despotism equalled only by the dynasties of the ancient East. They took from the German people all those dignities and freedoms that we hold natural and inalienable rights in every human being. The people were compensated by inflaming and gratifying hatreds towards those who were marked as ‘scapegoats’. Against their opponents, including Jews, Catholics, and free labour, the Nazis directed such a campaign of arrogance, brutality and annihilation as the world has not witnessed since the pre-Christian ages. They excited as the German ambition to be a ‘master race’, which of course implies serfdom for others. They led their people on a mad gamble for domination. They diverted social energies and resources to the creation of what they thought to be an invincible war machine. They overran their neighbours. To sustain the ‘master race’ in its war-making, they enslaved millions of human beings and brought them into Germany, where these hapless creatures now wander as ‘displaced persons’. At length bestiality and bad faith reached such excess that they aroused the sleeping strength of imperilled Civilisation. Its united efforts have ground the German war machine to fragments. But the struggle has left Europe a liberated yet prostrate land where a demoralised society struggles to survive. These are the fruits of the sinister forces that sit with the defendants in the prisoners’ dock.
In justice to the nations and the men associated in this prosecution, I must remind you of certain difficulties which may leave their mark on this face. Never before in legal history has an effort been made to bring within the scope of a single litigation the developments of a decade, covering a whole continent, and involving a score of nations, countless individuals, and innumerable events. Despite the magnitude of the task, the world has demanded immediate action. This demand has had to be met, though perhaps at the cost of finished craftsmanship. To my courtesy, established courts, following familiar procedures, applying well-thumbed precedents, and dealing with the legal consequences of local and limited events, seldom commence a trial within a year of the event in litigation. Yet less than eight months ago today the courtroom in which you sit was an enemy fortress in the hands of German SS troops. Less than eight months ago nearly all our witnesses and documents were in enemy hands. The law had not been codified, no procedures had been established, no Tribunal was in existence, no usable courthouse stood here, none of the hundreds of tons of official German documents had been examined, no prosecuting staff had been assembled, nearly all of the present defendants were at large, and the four prosecuting powers had not yet joined in common cause to try them. I should be the last to deny that the case may well suffer from incomplete researches and quite likely will not be the example of professional work which any of the prosecuting nations would normally wish to sponsor. It is, however, a completely adequate case to the judgement we shall ask you to render, and its full development we shall be obliged to leave to historians …
Unfortunately, the nature of these crimes is such that both prosecution and judgement must be by victor nations over vanquished foes. The worldwide scope of the aggressions carried out by these men has left but few real neutrals. Either the victors must judge the vanquished or we must leave the defeated to judge themselves. After the First World War, we learned the futility of the latter course. The former high station of these defendants, the notoriety of their acts, and the adaptability of their conduct provoke retaliation make it hard to distinguish between the demand for a just and measured retribution, and the unthinking cry for vengeance which arises from the anguish of war. It is our task, so far as humanly possible, to draw the line between the two. We must never forget that the records on which history will judge us tomorrow. To pass these defendants a poisoned chalice is to put it tour own lips as well. We must summon such detachment and intellectual integrity to our task that this trial will commend itself to posterity as fulfilling humanity’s aspirations to do justice…
It may well be that these men of troubled conscience, whose only wish is that the world forget them, do not regard a trial as a favour. But they do have a fair opportunity to defend themselves - a favour which these man, when in power, rarely extended to their fellow countrymen. Despite the fact that public opinion already condemns their acts, we agree that here they must be given a presumption of innocence, and we accept the burden of proving criminal acts and the responsibility of these defendants for their commission.
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. We charge guilt on planned and intended conduct that involves moral as well as legal wrong. And we do not mean conduct that is a natural and human, even if illegal, cutting of corners, such as many of us might well have committed had we been in the defendants’ positions. It is not because they yielded to the normal frailties of human beings that we accuse them. It is their abnormal and inhuman conduct which brings them to this bar.
We will not ask you to convict these men on the testimony of their foes. There is no count in the indictment that cannot be proved by books and records. The Germans were always meticulous record keepers, and these defendants had their share of the Teutonic passion for thoroughness in putting things on paper. Nor were they without vanity. They arranged frequently to be photographed in action. We will show you their own films. You will see their own conduct and hear their own voices as these defendants re-enact for you, from the screen, some of the events in the course of the conspiracy.
We would also make clear that we have no purpose to incriminate the whole German people. We know that the Nazi Party was not put in power by a majority of the German vote … The German, no less than the non-German world, has accounts to settle with these defendants …
The war did not just happen - it was palnned and prepared for over a long period of time and with no small skill and cunning. The world has perhaps never seen such a concentration and stimulation of the energies of any people as that which enabled Germany twenty years after it was defeated, disarmed, and dismembered to come so near carrying out its plan to dominate Europe. Whatever else we may say of those who were the authors of this war, they did achieve a stupendous work in organisation, and our first task is to examine the means by which these defendants and their fellow conspirators prepared and incited Germany to go to war.
In general, our case will disclose these defendants al uniting at some time with the Nazi Party in a plan which they well knew could be accomplished only by an outbreak of war in Europe. Their seizure of the German State, their subjugation of the German people, their terrorism and extermination of dissident elements, their planning and waging of war, their calculated and planned ruthlessness in the conduct of warfare, their deliberate and planned criminality toward conquered peoples - all these are ends for which they acted in concert; and all these are phases of the conspiracy, a conspiracy which reached one goal only to set out for another and more ambitious one …
The case presented by the United States will be concerned with the brains and authority back of all the crimes. These defendants were men of a station and rank which does not soil its own hands with blood. They were men who knew how to use lesser folk as tools. We ant to reach the planners and designers, the inciters and leaders without whose evil architecture the world would not have been for so long scourged with the violence and the lawlessness, and wracked with the agonies and convulsions, of this terrible war.
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Log update and essay question:
Ok. Lots of reading and note-taking and highlighting and coffee drinking later, I STILL can't quite come up with a question. It's really annoying me. I know that I want to write about - I want to compare My Lai and Nuremberg, and the trials of both of them. I'm going to bed to sleep on it.
Log update:
Since Mr. Stewart suggested that I should focus my essay on Vietnam and the My Lai massacre and mention Nuremberg, I've done a bit of research about those - just on the internet though (this means I've added some things to my bibliography). I have to go to the Barr Smith library tomorrow to return/extend the books I have, so while I'm there I may as well look at more books concerning Vietnam. I have some ideas in my head of what the essay question should be, but they aren't really lucid at the moment - I'm going to go and do some more reading now and will hopefully be able to post some possible questions later in the evening (yes, I am spending a Saturday night working on History).
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Log update:
Just doing some reading tonight. I've been looking at a book from the Barr Smith Library called War and Moral Responsibilty, which has a chapter called 'The Relevance of Nuremberg' and talks about how Nuremberg is used as a justification for war crimes - particularly in Vietnam. As a result of this I think I might write an essay which regards the Vietnam War in relation to Nuremberg. I'm encouraged by the fact that this book says that, "there is no shortage of literature" about this.
Also, Mr. Stewart - I added a website to my bibliography but I'm not really sure if the referencing is right?
Also, Mr. Stewart - I added a website to my bibliography but I'm not really sure if the referencing is right?
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Log update:
Okay, I definitely need to start updating this more often. Since my original post, I've been to the Barr Smith Library and gotten lots of really good books, later on tonight I'll (hopefully) go through them and take some notes down, and next weekend I'll possibly go back and get other books (now that I've gotten my card back after Turkey lost it). I really haven't been working on this enough, I feel really guilty about it, especially after looking at Sarah's blog. I intend to do lots of reading asap. Sigh.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Working bibliography:
Nuremberg Trials: 1945 - 1949. http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/nuremberg/nuremberg.htm. (Accessed 29/4/10).
The Nuremberg Trials and Their Legacy. http://www.uhsmm.org/museum/exhibit/focus/warcrimetrials/comment_post.hph. (Accessed 29/4/10).
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/. (Accessed 29/4/10).
Robertson, G., Crimes Against Humanity. Penguin Books, Victoria. 1999.
Landsman, S., Crimes of the Holocaust. University of Pennsylvania Press, Pennsylvania. 2005.
Brandt, R. B., et. al., War and Moral Responsibility. Princeton University Press, New Jersey. 1974.
Olson, J. S., et. al., My Lai: A Brief Histoyr with Documents. Bedford Books, New York. 1998.
Ehrenfreund, N., The Nuremberg Legacy. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. 2007.
Rochwood, L. P., Walking Away from Nurbemberg: Just War and the Doctrine of Command Responsibility. University of Massachusetts Press, Massachusetts. 2007.
Roland, P., The Nuremberg Trials. Arcturus Publising Limited, London. 2010.
D'Amato, A. A. D., War Crimes and Vietnam: The "Nuremberg Defense" and the Military Service Resister, http://anthonydamato.law.northwestern.edu/Adobefiles/A69d-nurembergdef.pdf. (Accessed 2/6/10).
Remember My Lai. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/programs/transcripts/714.html. (Accessed 5/6/10).
Biography of William Calley. http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/mylai/myl_bcalleyhtml.htm. (Accesed 5/6/10).
Linder, D., An Introduction to the My Lai Courts Martial. (Accessed 5/6/10).
Images of My Lai. http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/mylai/Myl_pho.htm. (Accessed 5/6/10).
Field Manual 27-10. http://faculty.ed.umuc.edu/~nstanton/FM27-10.htm. (Accessed 24/6/10).
Lt. William Calley An Apology for a Massacre Issued 41 Years Too Late. http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=83216. (Accessed 8/7/10).
Owen, J., Nuremberg. Headline Review, Great Britain. 2006.
Summation for the Prosecution by Robert Jackson. http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/nuremberg/Jacksonclose.htm. (Accessed 1/9/10).
The Nuremberg Trials and Their Legacy. http://www.uhsmm.org/museum/exhibit/focus/warcrimetrials/comment_post.hph. (Accessed 29/4/10).
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/. (Accessed 29/4/10).
Robertson, G., Crimes Against Humanity. Penguin Books, Victoria. 1999.
Landsman, S., Crimes of the Holocaust. University of Pennsylvania Press, Pennsylvania. 2005.
Brandt, R. B., et. al., War and Moral Responsibility. Princeton University Press, New Jersey. 1974.
Olson, J. S., et. al., My Lai: A Brief Histoyr with Documents. Bedford Books, New York. 1998.
Ehrenfreund, N., The Nuremberg Legacy. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. 2007.
Rochwood, L. P., Walking Away from Nurbemberg: Just War and the Doctrine of Command Responsibility. University of Massachusetts Press, Massachusetts. 2007.
Roland, P., The Nuremberg Trials. Arcturus Publising Limited, London. 2010.
D'Amato, A. A. D., War Crimes and Vietnam: The "Nuremberg Defense" and the Military Service Resister, http://anthonydamato.law.northwestern.edu/Adobefiles/A69d-nurembergdef.pdf. (Accessed 2/6/10).
Remember My Lai. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/programs/transcripts/714.html. (Accessed 5/6/10).
Biography of William Calley. http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/mylai/myl_bcalleyhtml.htm. (Accesed 5/6/10).
Linder, D., An Introduction to the My Lai Courts Martial. (Accessed 5/6/10).
Images of My Lai. http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/mylai/Myl_pho.htm. (Accessed 5/6/10).
Field Manual 27-10. http://faculty.ed.umuc.edu/~nstanton/FM27-10.htm. (Accessed 24/6/10).
Lt. William Calley An Apology for a Massacre Issued 41 Years Too Late. http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=83216. (Accessed 8/7/10).
Owen, J., Nuremberg. Headline Review, Great Britain. 2006.
Summation for the Prosecution by Robert Jackson. http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/nuremberg/Jacksonclose.htm. (Accessed 1/9/10).
Finally writing my first history blog!
For my essay I want to write something regarding the Nuremberg Trials. I was going to write about how the Nazis tried to justify their actions (which I still might do), but lately I've been thinking more about writing about the impact on the rest of the world, and how it sort of inspired the Universal Declaration for Human Rights. So a possible essay question could be "To what extent did the Nuremberg Trials influence the Universal Declaration for Human Rights?", but of course that's still just a very rough idea.
Hopefully I'll be able to do some more research on this over the weekend, and I'll visit the Barr Smith Library soon.
For my essay I want to write something regarding the Nuremberg Trials. I was going to write about how the Nazis tried to justify their actions (which I still might do), but lately I've been thinking more about writing about the impact on the rest of the world, and how it sort of inspired the Universal Declaration for Human Rights. So a possible essay question could be "To what extent did the Nuremberg Trials influence the Universal Declaration for Human Rights?", but of course that's still just a very rough idea.
Hopefully I'll be able to do some more research on this over the weekend, and I'll visit the Barr Smith Library soon.
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