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| President Steinmeier at Nuremberg today |
Earlier today Frank-Walter Steinmeier, President of the German Federal Republic, presided over a commemoration at Nuremberg's Palace of Justice, marking the 75th anniversary of the start of the infamous 'Nuremberg trials' on November 20th 1945.
As President Steinmeier put it today:
"Here, in this very room, while the rubble was being cleared away outside, the four victorious powers of World War II laid the foundation for the legal order of a new world."
Yet this anniversary should have been not an honoured occasion but a source of shame for all concerned, as the late Professor Robert Faurisson pointed out at the time of the 65th anniversary.
Right from the start, informed observers recognised that the Nuremberg trials were a travesty. Among many eminent critics was the veteran US Senator Robert Taft, who denounced the trial process as early as October 1946 in a comprehensive critique that included the point that trial of the "vanquished by the victors cannot be impartial no matter how it is hedged about with forms of justice", and that the process was based on a "Russian idea of the purpose of trials, government policy and not justice, having little relation to our Anglo-Saxon heritage".
By Russian, Sen. Taft of course meant Soviet – and his use of the term "Anglo-Saxon" hinted at an underlying characteristic of many Soviet rulers that was neither Russian nor Anglo-Saxon.
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| Chief Justice Harlan F. Stone |
US Supreme Court Chief Justice Harlan F. Stone was equally contemptuous of the Nuremberg trials, which he described as a "high-grade lynching" and "a little too sanctimonious a fraud to meet my old-fashioned ideas".
In fact high-level criticism of the Nuremberg charade began right from the moment in October 1941 when the Allies (which in practice at that time meant the British Empire and the Soviet Union, with diplomatic lip-service paid to others) first began discussing the notion of "war crimes trials".
Maurice Hankey (by this time Lord Hankey) was the effective founder of the modern Civil Service, having been Cabinet Secretary from 1916 to 1938 and forged Britain's war-winning government machine during the First World War.
Hankey had a key role in the Versailles peace conferences that followed that war, and during the autumn of 1941 he wrote to Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden urging him not to repeat the mistakes of that foolishly vengeful 'peace'.
Eden replied that he agreed with much of Hankey's critique, but warned that Britain's allies (for which we must read the Soviets, Poles and others) were already planning to go ahead with a declaration on "war crimes" that "would go a good deal further than ours".
Therefore, Eden warned Hankey, he should accept the relatively "inoffensive" Foreign Office draft, otherwise "we are likely to find the Allies coming out with something far more embarrassing".
The embarrassment was to last more than 75 years, insofar as Eden and his successors were embarrassable. Despite his initial reluctance and Hankey's even franker opposition, Eden and his government were drawn into accepting a ludicrous catalogue of "war crimes" charges that have become set in stone as unchallengeable history. The Nuremberg judgment even asserted that Germany was responsible for the Katyn massacre of Polish officers and intellectuals – a charge that everyone now accepts as nonsense.
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| Lord Hankey (formerly Sir Maurice Hankey), one of the earliest critics of the 'war crimes' charade |
Yet we are required in 2020 to celebrate and honour the sham justice of Nuremberg that incorporated this nonsense as truth.
Eden's warning about "embarrassing" judicial processes did have one echo almost eight decades later.
Just a few weeks before this 75th anniversary, German prosecutors in Dresden were due to bring Lady Michèle Renouf to court over a speech that she made on an earlier anniversary in February 2018 – the 73rd anniversary of the Allied terror bombing of Dresden.
Among the remarks in this speech – for which Lady Renouf was arrested, charged and faced a possible five-year prison sentence – was a quotation from Lord Hankey, who had opposed the terror bombing as well as the postwar Nuremberg trial travesty.
Eventually German prosecutors realised the embarrassment they would face in having a court (and accompanying press) hear the documented historical truth about Hankey and others quoted by Lady Renouf, regarding Nuremberg, Dresden and other aspects of the Second World War, including the alleged 'Holocaust' of European Jewry.
This was among the several reasons why charges against Lady Renouf were dropped at the eleventh hour.
Over coming weeks and months this blog and associated social media accounts will continue to examine reasons for the Federal Republic's judicial embarrassment.
This week Lady Renouf discussed aspects of her case with Dr Ed DeVries on the TBR History Hour – see link below.
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