NUREMBERG. ANOTHER REMAKE OF THE SAME OLD MYTHS
- lhpgop
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AN INDICTMENT OF THE THIRD REICH OR SILENCE OF THE LAMBS WITH NAZIS?
Disclaimer:
This publication is presented solely for historical, legal, and academic analysis. Nothing herein should be construed as an endorsement, defense, or justification of the ideology, policies, actions, or leadership of wartime Germany during the Second World War. The discussion of historical events, legal proceedings, and individuals associated with that period is intended exclusively to examine the legal, procedural, and political dimensions of the Nuremberg Trials and their legacy. Any suggestion to the contrary is expressly disclaimed.
From the Editorial Staff.
2025 brings yet another opportunity to examine the strange case of justice denied that was the Nuremberg Trials. This new film, like so many of its predecessors, chooses to sidestep the most troubling pitfalls of the so-called “Trial of the Century” and instead focuses on less inflammatory themes. In doing so, the viewing public is once again shortchanged—and in some cases actively misled—into believing that the Nuremberg Trials were (1) inherently just, (2) comprehensive in their prosecutions, and (3) the definitive moral and legal conclusion to the Third Reich and those who built and served it. In response, we offer a series of practical insights into the reality of the trial of the so-called “Enemies of Mankind,” the origins of the term “Crimes Against Humanity,” and the ways in which political expediency and emerging Cold War priorities transformed the proceedings into a farce—one whose consequences continue to trouble later generations.
Nuremberg Reconsidered:
How Allied Legal Shortcomings Distorted Justice, Memory, and Historical Accountability**
Introduction: The Trial That Became a Myth
The Nuremberg Trials are routinely portrayed as the definitive moral and legal conclusion to the Second World War—a moment when civilization reasserted itself and law triumphed over atrocity. In public memory, they are depicted as the final judgment on the Third Reich and the ultimate reckoning for the Holocaust.
Yet this narrative does not withstand careful scrutiny. Nuremberg was not a comprehensive prosecution of Nazi criminality, nor a complete accounting of responsibility for genocide. Rather, it was a politically constrained tribunal shaped by postwar expediency, emerging Cold War priorities, and legal improvisation. Its omissions have fueled distortion, denial, and revisionism ever since.¹
"The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant and so devastating, that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored because it cannot survive their being repeated."
Robert Jackson, Chief Prosecutor for the United States at the Nuremberg Trials
I. A Tribunal Born of Necessity, Not Legal Maturity
The International Military Tribunal (IMT) was created without a preexisting framework of international criminal law. The crimes it prosecuted—crimes against humanity, crimes against peace, and conspiracy—were either newly articulated or significantly expanded during and after the war.²
Structural limitations were embedded in the tribunal:
No trials in absentia
No posthumous indictments
No appellate review
Judges drawn exclusively from victorious powers
Explicit exclusion of Allied conduct from jurisdiction³
These constraints reflected deliberate political decisions. The Allies sought accountability without destabilizing postwar Europe or undermining their own wartime actions.
The Illusion of Prosecuting “Great Men”
One of the most enduring myths of Nuremberg is that it placed the true leaders of the Third Reich on trial. In reality, the most consequential architects of Nazi criminality never faced judgment at all.
Adolf Hitler — dead by suicide
Heinrich Himmler — dead by suicide
Reinhard Heydrich — assassinated in 1942
Joseph Goebbels — dead by suicide
Under Allied legal procedure, death closed the file. There were no posthumous findings of guilt, no trials in absentia, no formal legal record attributing ultimate responsibility to the men who designed and directed the Holocaust.
This omission was not trivial. It created a permanent vacuum at the center of the historical record. (Ed. Note)
II. The Silence in the Dock
The most consequential absence at Nuremberg was Adolf Hitler himself. Because the tribunal refused to conduct trials in absentia or issue posthumous judgments, Hitler was never indicted, tried, or convicted. His suicide terminated legal proceedings before they could begin.⁴
This omission was not due to evidentiary weakness. The Wannsee Protocol, Einsatzgruppen reports, Führer directives, and correspondence between Hitler, Himmler, and Heydrich establish a clear chain of command.⁵ Yet the legal framework of 1945 offered no mechanism to adjudicate guilt beyond death.
The result was a structural silence that revisionists later exploited to advance the claim that Hitler “did not know” of the Holocaust—a claim rejected by virtually all serious historians but sustained politically by the absence of a verdict.⁶
III. Göring, the Reich’s Charlatan-in-Chief
Hermann Göring’s prominence at Nuremberg illustrates the tribunal’s reliance on symbolism over operational reality. While Göring founded the Gestapo in 1933, he relinquished control to Heinrich Himmler by April 1934. Thereafter, the SS and SD—under Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich—controlled internal security, concentration camps, and genocidal policy.⁷
By the late 1930s and throughout the war, Göring’s influence declined sharply. Following the Luftwaffe’s failures, he was increasingly marginalized, addicted to narcotics, and excluded from key decisions.⁸
Nonetheless, Allied prosecutors elevated Göring’s role to provide a visible antagonist. He was medically rehabilitated to ensure courtroom performance, reinforcing the illusion that Nuremberg confronted the regime’s true power center.⁹
IV. Heydrich — The Architect Without a Verdict
Reinhard Heydrich exercised more operational authority over genocide than any figure other than Himmler. As head of the SD and RSHA, he controlled intelligence, policing, deportations, and racial classification. He convened the Wannsee Conference to coordinate the Final Solution bureaucratically across the Reich.¹⁰
Heydrich’s assassination in 1942 removed him from legal accountability. Because the IMT rejected posthumous proceedings, Heydrich was never indicted or convicted, despite overwhelming documentary evidence.¹¹
This omission left the Holocaust without its principal operational author in the legal record—a gap that remains one of Nuremberg’s most consequential failures.
V. Speer — The Penitent Mask
Albert Speer’s case demonstrates how narrative utility shaped outcomes. As Armaments Minister, Speer presided over a massive slave-labor system dependent on concentration-camp prisoners. Postwar evidence confirms that he was aware of deportations and mass death.¹²
At Nuremberg, Speer performed repentance, accepting abstract responsibility while denying specific knowledge. His contrition served Allied political needs by offering a symbol of German rehabilitation.¹³ He was spared execution and sentenced to twenty years.
Speer’s incarceration at Spandau—and the prison’s demolition after Hess’s death—reflected Allied concern over memory management rather than legal necessity.¹⁴
VI. The Holocaust Without a Legal Author
The tribunal never produced definitive judgments against:
Adolf Hitler
Heinrich Himmler
Reinhard Heydrich
As a result, responsibility appeared fragmented and symbolic rather than centralized and authoritative. The law spoke—but incompletely.
"It was the virtue of the Nuremberg trial that it was conceived in hatred of war, and nurtured by those starved of peace. Of course, the trial was botched and imperfect...it had to deal with new crimes for which there was no provision in national law or international law."Rebecca West, a writer who covered the trials for the New Yorker magazine.
VII. How Legal Gaps Became Ideological Weapons
The absence of verdicts enabled exploitation. Revisionists argue that Hitler’s lack of conviction implies ignorance; Heydrich’s absence suggests improvisation; Göring’s trial implies centrality. These claims collapse under scholarship but persist politically because the legal record remains incomplete.¹⁵
Courts create finality. Nuremberg did not.
"So grotesque and preposterous are the principal characters in this galaxy of clowns and crooks that none but a thrice double ass could have taken them for rulers."
Officer in the Allied Control Commission.
VIII. From Justice to Memory
Because legal accountability was incomplete, the burden of preserving truth shifted to survivors, historians, and Jewish institutions. Holocaust memory became a substitute for verdicts never rendered.¹⁶
Conclusion: Nuremberg as a Necessary Failure
Nuremberg was morally justified and historically groundbreaking. But it was also politically constrained and legally incomplete. By refusing to prosecute the true architects of genocide, the Allies left a distortion that continues to fuel denial and conspiracy.
The persistence of claims that Hitler was innocent of the Holocaust is not accidental. It is the consequence of a tribunal that chose closure over completeness—and in doing so, denied history the finality justice requires.
Footnotes
Richard J. Evans, The Third Reich at War (New York: Penguin, 2008).
Mark Drumbl, Atrocity, Punishment, and International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
International Military Tribunal Charter, Article 6 (1945).
Ian Kershaw, Hitler: Nemesis (New York: W.W. Norton, 2000).
Peter Longerich, Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).
Christopher Browning, The Origins of the Final Solution (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004).
Robert Gellately, Backing Hitler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
Adam Tooze, The Wages of Destruction (New York: Viking, 2006).
Gustave Gilbert, Nuremberg Diary (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Company, 1947).
Wannsee Conference Protocol, January 20, 1942.
Peter Padfield, Himmler: Reichsführer-SS (New York: Henry Holt, 1990).
Matthias Schmidt, Albert Speer: The End of a Myth (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1984).
Dan van der Vat, The Good Nazi (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997).
Norman Goda, Tales from Spandau (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
Deborah Lipstadt, Denying the Holocaust (New York: Free Press, 1993).
Saul Friedländer, Memory, History, and the Extermination of the Jews of Europe (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993).
Appendix A: Legal Citations (Bluebook Format)
Primary Legal Authorities
Charter of the International Military Tribunal, art. 6, Aug. 8, 1945, 82 U.N.T.S. 279.
Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal, vol. 1–42 (Int’l Mil. Trib. 1947).
Judgment of the International Military Tribunal, Oct. 1, 1946, reprinted in Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal, vol. 1.
Protocol of the Wannsee Conference, Jan. 20, 1942, reprinted in Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, vol. 7 (U.S. Gov’t Printing Office 1946).
Foundational Legal Analysis & International Criminal Law
Mark A. Drumbl, Atrocity, Punishment, and International Law (Cambridge Univ. Press 2007).
Antonio Cassese, International Criminal Law (2d ed. Oxford Univ. Press 2008).
Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (Viking Press 1963).
Telford Taylor, The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials (Knopf 1992).
Holocaust Command Responsibility & Nazi Governance
Ian Kershaw, Hitler: Nemesis (W.W. Norton & Co. 2000).
Peter Longerich, Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews (Oxford Univ. Press 2010).
Christopher R. Browning, The Origins of the Final Solution (Univ. of Neb. Press 2004).
Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews (3d ed. Yale Univ. Press 2003).
Göring, Heydrich, and the SS State
Robert Gellately, Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany (Oxford Univ. Press 2001).
Peter Padfield, Himmler: Reichsführer-SS (Henry Holt & Co. 1990).
Richard Breitman, The Architect of Genocide: Himmler and the Final Solution (Univ. Press of New England 1991).
Gustave M. Gilbert, Nuremberg Diary (Farrar, Straus & Giroux 1947).
Albert Speer, Spandau, and Postwar Justice
Matthias Schmidt, Albert Speer: The End of a Myth (St. Martin’s Press 1984).
Dan van der Vat, The Good Nazi: The Life and Lies of Albert Speer (Houghton Mifflin 1997).
Norman J.W. Goda, Tales from Spandau: Nazi Criminals and the Cold War (Cambridge Univ. Press 2007).
Holocaust Memory, Denial, and Legal Silence
Deborah E. Lipstadt, Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory (Free Press 1993).
Saul Friedländer, Memory, History, and the Extermination of the Jews of Europe (Indiana Univ. Press 1993).
Jeffrey Herf, Divided Memory: The Nazi Past in the Two Germanys (Harvard Univ. Press 1997).
Cold War Context & Allied Political Constraints
John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History (Penguin Press 2005).
Adam Tooze, The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy (Viking Press 2006).
Norman M. Naimark, The Russians in Germany (Harvard Univ. Press 1995).