Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression (Complete)

On the 2d day of May 1945, President Truman signed Executive Order 9547 appointing Justice Robert H. Jackson as Representative of the United States and as its Chief of Counsel in the preparation and prosecution of the case against the major Axis war criminals. Since that date and up to the present, the staff of the Office of Chief of Counsel, or OCC, has been engaged continuously in the discovery, collection, examination, translation, and marshalling of documentary evidence demonstrating the criminality of the former leaders of the German Reich. Since the 20th day of November 1945, a considerable part of this documentary arsenal has been directed against the 22 major Nazi war criminals who are on trial before the International Military Tribunal in Nurnberg. As of this writing the American and British cases-in-chief, on Counts I and II of the Indictment charging, respectively, conspiracy and the waging of wars of aggression, have been completed. There is perhaps no need to recall in these pages that the Nurnberg trial represents the first time in history that legal proceedings have been instituted against leaders of an enemy nation. It is perhaps equal supererogation to state here that there are no exact precedents for the charges made by the American, British, French, and Russian prosecutors that to plot or wage a war of aggression is a crime for which individuals may be punished. Yet it was because of these very facts that in its indictment the prosecution presented a challenge to itself quite as great as to the defense. A heavy burden was laid on the accusing nations to make sure that their proof measured up to the magnitude of their accusations, and that the daring of their grand conception was matched by the industry of their research, lest the hard-bought opportunity to make International Law a guardian of peace should fail by default.