After WWII, the Nuremberg trial held leaders of the Axis powers accountable for war crimes, featuring the holocaust. Hopefully, it gave Jews a measure of justice. Notably, the trial launched the USA into international influence. Many lessons were learned which need to be preserved and applied. Ironically, the USA and Israel are today’s wonton criminals of aggression and racism, to the point of being called genocidal.
Thinking caring people are feeling despair as the USA provokes war and grinds down Americans. Capitalism is literally tearing away the economics of the middle class. Today, Donald Trump is working to join the ranks of Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin as world-controlling autocrats. These tyrants use strong state control, knowing it is more direct and conducive to their interests than a messy representative democracy.
The trial noted the “arrogance of violence and cruelty of power”
The historically accurate Nuremberg movie (Sony 2025, on Netflix) gets good reviews and has excellent acting. Notably, it provides a grim reminder of the psychological mindset that characterized the Axis’s leadership. The fascist-types are more than willing to do whatever they must to have their way. This mindset is how we have minority rule in the USA.
Justice Robert H. Jackson delivered a magnificent opening to the proceedings
Justice Jackson’s opening was a strong indictment of the men and their crimes. He said why it was important not to let it go. Sadly, we are not standing up against the same behaviors today. Trump and his cohorts do not like to be compared to Hitler or Nazis, but there are too many consistencies.
Read Jackson’s opening (or watch the movie) thinking of how it applies to our “leaders”.
Following is Justice Jackson’s profound opening to the Nuremberg trial
The privilege of opening the first trial in history for crimes against the peace of the world, imposes a grave responsibility. The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant, and so devastating, that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored, because we cannot survive their being repeated.
In the prisoners’ dock sit twenty-odd broken men. We will show them to be living symbols of racial hatreds, of terrorism and violence, and of the arrogance of violence and cruelty of power. Civilizations can afford no compromise by dealing ambiguously or indecisively with the men in whom these powers now precariously survive.
Wars are no longer local. All modern wars become world wars, eventually. And none of the big nations can stay out. But the ultimate step in avoiding periodic wars in a system of international lawlessness, is to make statesmen responsible for the law. And let me make clear, that while this law is first applied against German aggressors, it must condemn aggression by any other nation. Including those who sit here now in judgment. We are able to do away with domestic tyranny and violence and aggression by those in power against the rights of their own people… only when we make all men answerable to the law.
