Nuremberg by William F. Buckley Jr

Author:William F. Buckley Jr. [Buckley, William F. Jr.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, War
ISBN: 9780156027472
Google: kYGEOzxeU1YC
Goodreads: 43850696
Publisher: Endeavour Media
Published: 2002-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirty-One

Nuremberg , December 1945

The prosecution had spent ten vigorous days arguing not the guilt of individual defendants but rather the corporate guilt of entire organizations. The objective was nakedly there: to lay convenient groundwork for prima facie guilt-by-association.

The prosecution was asking the tribunal to affirm that participation by Germans in any of several Nazi activities should, eo ipso , justify a finding of guilt of war criminal activity, such guilt to be punishable by whatever the court, reviewing the evidence against individual defendants, thought appropriate, including a death sentence. A defendant shall be held guilty, the prosecution pleaded, if he had been 1) part of the Nazi Party “leadership,” 2) a member of the Reich Cabinet, 3) a member of the SS, Gestapo, SD, or SA, or 4) if he had been an officer in the German High Command.

This was big-time judicial activism. If the Nuremberg tribunal, in the matter of the twenty-three individual defendants seated opposite in the courtroom, concurred in these pleadings of the prosecution, future courts — of which there would be many, dealing with lesser figures — would need only to establish that a defendant had been any-of-the-above in order immediately to be judged guilty, under the law, of criminal conduct.

Sitting alongside Albright, Sebastian, for an hour or two, took in the arguments being made by U.S., British, and Soviet prosecutors, after which he repaired to his little office with its typewriter and mimeograph machine and dictionary and, by now, twenty file cabinets. There he would resume his work on German-language affidavits, records, and archives.

The interrogation of Amadeus had been suspended for an interval. Sebastian was instructed by Captain Carver on what especially to look for, and after a while he needed no day-to-day guidance. Carver, meticulous but dogmatically antibureaucratic, came to trust the young man who learned his job so quickly and accepted his workload without complaint. When Sebastian came upon long stretches of reports or memoranda or affidavits that he judged routine, he would not go to the pains of translating them word for word. Instead, he’d write a few paragraphs of paraphrase and attach them to a folder. To it he sometimes appended a three-by-five card with a personal note, which Captain Carver would be expected to discard after reading. This character — Sebastian was describing one Obersturmfuehrer (First Lieutenant) named Heinrich Lichtman — did extra , unreported work at Joni and beat up his prisoners before sending them up to the gas chamber . I hope you can keep him alive for a while . I’d like to go to college , then law school , then come back and prosecute this one myself . — Again , seat of the pants , boss , I think Humbolt here is telling the truth . The mathematics don’t work . The camp couldn’t have handled the claimed volume . Must have been terribly disappointing .

Sometimes Captain Carver would ask for more detail. Sebastian had begun his mission with an almost exclusive concern

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.