https://void.cat/d/BqdEzhE257pwBxUrm4vaWo.webp

Did you know that the first international trial for war crimes at Nuremberg, which is often credited as a US invention, was brought about by the Soviet Union?

In fact, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British PM Winston Churchill tried to convince Soviet leader Joseph Stalin to support their proposal to summarily execute a list of 2,500 Nazis upon capture as a more "expedient" alternative to Stalin's insistence on an international tribunal.

Until late 1944 and 1945, Roosevelt and Churchill were against the international trial Stalin had called for since 1942.

Indeed, well before any other country, in 1943, captured Soviet military tribunals were trying Wehrmacht and SS officers for war crimes.

Roosevelt initially supported Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau Jr's proposal to apprehend Nazi war criminals and put them "to death forthwith by firing squads."

But when the plan was leaked, public outrage pushed Roosevelt to abandon it.

Churchill eventually, but grudgingly, followed suit, acknowledging in a telegram to Roosevelt Stalin's "ultra-respectable line" that "there must be no executions without trial; otherwise, the world would say we were afraid to try them."

The US is wrongly credited with the idea of an international trial and the significant legal innovations for which the Nuremberg trials became famous.

Proposals by Soviet legal experts, particularly jurist Aron Tranin, formed the basis of the charges of "war crimes," "crimes against humanity," & "complicity" that were lodged against Nazis at Nuremberg and invalidated "I was just obeying orders" as a defense.

#WWII #SovietHistory #AntiFascism #NeverAgain