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Shofar FTP Archive File: places//germany/nuremberg/basis-for-charges


Newsgroups: alt.revisionism,soc.culture.german
Subject: Basis for Nuremberg Tribunal
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References:    <45c88h$1jo@xretle.intersource.com>
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In article <45c88h$1jo@xretle.intersource.com>, 
jweber@intersource.com (Joe Weber) wrote:

>The U.S. prigs who tallk about 'crimes against humanity ' and war crimes 
>forget that  the U.S. forbids the enforcing of an 'ex post facto' law, 
>i.e. one past after the fact.  The Nuremburg kangaroo court tried people 
>for 'crimes'defined after they had occured (ergo ex post facto).  It also 
>guranteed that the leaders, military and civilian, of the loser in all 
>future wars will be tired for these same 'crimes' by the winner.

Browsing through Tusas' "The Nuremberg Trial," (58-59) we see
discussion of the basis for the charges at Nuremberg
discussed, and the conclusion that waging aggressive war was,
in and of itself, a crime.

The legal basis for this assertion relates to the Pact of
Paris, or the Kellog-Briand Pact (1928), in which the
signatories renounced war as an instrument of national policy
for the solution of disputes. Germany was a signatory to this
international pact, along with 62 other nations.

While Stimson clearly believed that this pact, and other
agreements among various European nations, made waging
aggressive war a crime, others did not, as (among other
things) the Pact did not list sanctions for those in breech -
i.e. there was no punishment to fit the crime.

Justice Jackson, however, "...had no doubts that aggressive
war was a crime." (See his 1941 paper before the Inter-American
Bar Association in Havana, for instance.)

In short, the assertion that the crimes only "became" crimes
after the end of the war cannot be supported.

For an exhaustive discussion of the evolution of the charges,
and their legal basis, see Tusa, Ann & John, "The Nuremberg
Trial," Birmingham, Alabama: The Notable Trials Library, 1990,
pp. 57-90.


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