War Crimes Trials Were about Politics Only

Make no mistake, my key complaint about post-war trials of Nazi war criminals is that too few of them were ever tried – and of those who were, most got highly lenient sentences (and some just a “slap on the wrist”). Looks like Themis (Greek goddess of justice) got far too blind in those cases.

There were two primary reasons for this grandiose injustice. First, no one (even the Soviet leaders) cared about Russians, Ukrainians, Byelorussians, Poles or Jews (especially about the latter).

Second, all these trials were about politics – not justice (or even revenge). No one gave a rat’s ass (pardon my French) about justice – all everyone wanted was to protect a dirty grand secret of the Second Great War: all belligerents committed horrific war crimes.

Nazis poisoned and shot millions of Jews (and shots hundreds of thousands of Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, etc.); British and Americans deliberately burned alive hundreds of thousands of German civilians (Americans also of Japanese civilians); the Soviets murdered tens of thousands of Poles (in Katyn forest and elsewhere), raped close to two million German women of all ages…

But the most horrific dirty grand secret was one of the criminal decisions of (in)famous Potsdam conference: to cleanse Eastern Europe of German civilians who committed no crime at all – just because they were Germans.

About 15 million were brutally deported to Germany and up to two million were savagely murdered (in a far worse way than by a bullet or by gas). Right during the (in)famous Nuremberg IMT trial a genuine “German Holocaust” (one half of Shoah) was being committed.

Claiming that the Allies (British and American) who burned alive 400,000 German civilians were somehow “better” than the Nazis who killed 4 million Jews is like saying that Jack the Ripper (who killed five) is somehow “better” than Gary Ridgeway who murdered fifty.

In reality, in the eyes of a criminal justice system, they are equal: both would get death penalty (where it is on the books) or life in prison without the possibility of parole (where it is not).

The unfortunate consequence of this dirty grand secret is that one can not completely trust any of the documents produced by any war crimes trial (especially in the Soviet Union or in Eastern Europe). Every “authentic” document and every statement – of the defendant or witness – is suspect and must be double-checked.