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Nuremberg Trials

Nuremberg Trials

History teaches nothing, especially fools.

I increasingly remember Nuremberg and everything connected with it.

It's a very helpful and instructive story. The Nuremberg trials of the key Nazi criminals are mainly mentioned. One may not know, but there were 12 of them. Their names mean a lot for those who care, of course:

- The Doctors Trial

- The Judges Trial

- The Pohl Trial

- The Krupp Trial (businessmen who provided financial assistance to criminals).

- The Einsatzgruppen Trial (SS mobile death squads).

The Wilhelmstrasse Trial or the Ministries Trial is noteworthy. It was the trial of senior government officials, heads of various ministries and departments.

Military tribunals held in Europe and other countries when World War II was over convicted more than 30,000 Nazi criminals.

At the Nuremberg trials, many witnesses, trying to distance themselves from the regime, described all orders of the Reich leadership, both written and oral. This evidence provided a firm ground that made the death penalty applicable to the Nazi criminals.

The courts accepted the testimony against the major Nazi criminals and commuted the sentence for material witnesses.

The trials, not only in Nuremberg but throughout Europe, were organized as a matter of urgency. In particular, to save a large number of people, not only the criminals from lynching. The hatred of Hitler's Germany was so strong.

George Orwell, the author of "1984", wrote that if war criminals had been brought to Wembley Stadium to be torn up by wild animals, there would certainly have been no free place in the stands. Wembley had a capacity of over 80,000 people in the 1940s.

On 15 August 1946, the American Information Administration reported surveys. According to them, an overwhelming number of Germans (about 80%) considered the Nuremberg Trials fair and the guilt of the defendants undeniable; about half of respondents answered that defendants had to be sentenced to death; only 4% were negative about the trial.

Trials can differ, as we all know.

The mad Romanian dictator Ceausescu was also tried, formally.

The charges were correct, very familiar ones:

Article 145 (destruction of the national economy);

Article 163 (armed resistance against the people and the State);

Article 165 (destruction of State institutions);

Article 356 (genocide).

However, the trial was just a screen. Once the Romanian dictator ordered Securitate to use weapons against demonstrators in Timisoara, he lived only a few days. Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena Ceausescu, an academician and honorary professor at several dozens of prestigious Western universities, were shot dead by their entourage. They had no chance to even escape from the country. They had their sentence announced and 10 days for an appeal. However, they were later shot dead in the yard of the military unit barracks. Their bodies were thrown as stray dogs on the football stadium. They were even buried under someone else's name so that people could not abuse their bodies.

Of course, it's better to obey the law. But do not test people's patience.

History teaches nothing, especially fools.

But it likes to repeat itself.

Andrei Sannikov, Facebook

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