Trial by Victory

From the heavy marble ornaments above the main door, an hourglass stands out in sharp and ominous relief. The Nuernberg court, jampacked for the first time in weeks, finally began to notice it. Time was running out for the accused.

The neat, somberly clad man who had opened the world's case against the Nazi war criminals was still pale and nervous as he prepared to close it last week. U.S. Chief Prosecutor Robert Houghwout Jackson knew that not merely the courtroom's obedient microphones but also the ears of history were listening to his words. Jackson tried to show that the trial's 'mad and melancholy" mass of evidence, which the U.S. prosecution had helped compile with masterly precision, was not, as the defense had claimed, merely a disconnected series of misfortunes. Said Jackson: "Each part of the plan fitted into every other. . . . The armament industries were fed by the concentration camps. The concentration camps were fed by the Gestapo. The Gestapo was fed by the spy system. . . . Planning a war . . . involves the manipulation of public opinion . . . industry and finance."

Goeoring, who had no illusions about his impending fate, was unmoved by the speech. But many of his fellow defendants --who had hoped to find refuge in their fields of public opinion, industry, finance --blanched as Jackson inexorably linked men like Journalist Streicher ("the venomous vulgarian") to Banker Schacht ("facade of starched respectability"); Diplomat von Ribbentrop ("salesman of deception") to Youth Leader von Schirach ("poisoner of a generation"); Diplomat von Papen ("pious agent of an infidel regime") to Slave Labor Boss Sauckel ("the cruelest slave driver since the Pharaohs").

With sweeping scorn, Jackson tackled their common excuse that only Hitler was to blame. "The defendants may have become slaves of a dictator, but he was their dictator. . . . They were the Praetorian Guard, and while they were under Caesar's orders, Caesar was always in their hands. ... If you were to say of these men that they are not guilty, it would be as true to say . . . there are no slain. . . ." In his opening speech eight weary months ago, Jackson had boldly raised the question of the trial's moral and legal basis. He avoided that overriding issue in his closing speech. The omission was not widely noted. The world public would be content to see the Nuernberg criminals die, but it had not got around to distinguishing between criminal and legal war. Until the world public -- or a considerable part of it-- did that, Nuernberg convictions would be a function of victory rather than of law.

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