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Opening Statements at Nuremberg and Tokyo

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Law, Politics and the Limits of Prosecuting Mass Atrocity

Part of the book series: Human Rights Interventions ((HURIIN))

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Abstract

Rogers shows that the opening statements made by Jackson at Nuremberg and Keenan at Tokyo were vital ingredients in the trial process. This chapter describes how both prosecutors used legal rhetoric that self-consciously distinguishes itself from political concerns and distanced the trial from the ugly realities of international armed conflict. By examining their vilification of Nazism and Shinto-Imperialism as two discredited utopian movements, the chapter argues that this prosecutorial conduct was politics in action, especially as both prosecutors explicitly extolled the virtues of neo-capitalism. Rogers goes as far as to suggest the prosecutors’ denouncing of the defendants invokes a belligerent rhetoric of silent war.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Gregory Townsend, “Structure and Management,” in International Prosecutor, ed. Luc Reydams et al. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 201.

  2. 2.

    International Military Tribunal, Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal II Proceedings (Nuremberg, Germany, 1947), 14 November–30 November 1945, 98–155.

  3. 3.

    Arnold C. Brackman, The Other Nuremberg: The Untold Story of the Tokyo War Crimes Trials (London: Collins, 1989), 98.

  4. 4.

    International Military Tribunal, Trial of Major War Criminals, 103–104.

  5. 5.

    International Military Tribunal, Trial of Major War Criminals, 104.

  6. 6.

    International Military Tribunal, Trial of Major War Criminals, 119 & 126.

  7. 7.

    Robert Donihi, “War Crimes,” St John’s Law Review 66(3) (1992): 748.

  8. 8.

    Joseph B. Keenan, Opening Statement of the Prosecution Northcroft Archive (Prosecution’s Documents file) Macmillan Brown Library, University of Canterbury.

  9. 9.

    Gerry Simpson, Law, War and Crime: War Crimes Trials and the Reinvention of International Law (Cambridge: Polity, 2007), 148.

  10. 10.

    International Military Tribunal, Trial of Major War Criminals, 99.

  11. 11.

    International Military Tribunal, Trial of Major War Criminals, 104.

  12. 12.

    International Military Tribunal, Trial of Major War Criminals, 109–110.

  13. 13.

    International Military Tribunal, Trial of Major War Criminals, 113.

  14. 14.

    International Military Tribunal, Trial of Major War Criminals, 118.

  15. 15.

    International Military Tribunal, Trial of Major War Criminals, 138.

  16. 16.

    Keenan, Opening Statement, 1.

  17. 17.

    Keenan, Opening Statement, 3.

  18. 18.

    Keenan, Opening Statement, 32.

  19. 19.

    Keenan, Opening Statement, 7.

  20. 20.

    International Military Tribunal, Trial of Major War Criminals, 130–135.

  21. 21.

    International Military Tribunal, Trial of Major War Criminals, 141.

  22. 22.

    Keenan, Opening Statement, 43.

  23. 23.

    Keenan, Opening Statement, 42.

  24. 24.

    Keenan, Opening Statement, 45.

  25. 25.

    International Military Tribunal, Trial of Major War Criminals, 144.

  26. 26.

    International Military Tribunal, Trial of Major War Criminals, 147.

  27. 27.

    Keenan, Opening Statement, 6.

  28. 28.

    Keenan, Opening Statement, 8.

  29. 29.

    International Military Tribunal, Trial of Major War Criminals, 150.

  30. 30.

    Keenan, Opening Statement, 31.

  31. 31.

    International Military Tribunal, Trial of Major War Criminals, 99–100.

  32. 32.

    International Military Tribunal, Trial of Major War Criminals, 107.

  33. 33.

    International Military Tribunal, Trial of Major War Criminals, 110.

  34. 34.

    International Military Tribunal, Trial of Major War Criminals, 154.

  35. 35.

    International Military Tribunal, Trial of Major War Criminals, 109.

  36. 36.

    International Military Tribunal, Trial of Major War Criminals, 131.

  37. 37.

    International Military Tribunal, Trial of Major War Criminals, 99.

  38. 38.

    International Military Tribunal, Trial of Major War Criminals, 105–113.

  39. 39.

    International Military Tribunal, Trial of Major War Criminals, 107.

  40. 40.

    Keenan, Opening Statement, 2.

  41. 41.

    Keenan, Opening Statement, 38.

  42. 42.

    Keenan, Opening Statement, 39.

  43. 43.

    Keenan, Opening Statement, 36.

  44. 44.

    Keenan, Opening Statement, 32.

  45. 45.

    International Military Tribunal, Trial of Major War Criminals, 153.

  46. 46.

    International Military Tribunal, Trial of Major War Criminals, 153.

  47. 47.

    Keenan, Opening Statement, 33.

  48. 48.

    Keenan, Opening Statement, 2.

  49. 49.

    Keenan, Opening Statement, 8.

  50. 50.

    Keenan, Opening Statement, 2.

  51. 51.

    Keenan, Opening Statement, 38.

  52. 52.

    Keenan, Opening Statement, 56.

  53. 53.

    International Military Tribunal, Trial of Major War Criminals, 150.

  54. 54.

    Keenan, Opening Statement, 1.

  55. 55.

    Keenan, Opening Statement, 31.

  56. 56.

    Keenan, Opening Statement, 50.

  57. 57.

    International Military Tribunal, Trial of Major War Criminals, 98–99.

  58. 58.

    International Military Tribunal, Trial of Major War Criminals, 154.

  59. 59.

    International Military Tribunal, Trial of Major War Criminals, 155.

  60. 60.

    Keenan, Opening Statement, 1.

  61. 61.

    Keenan, Opening Statement, 6.

  62. 62.

    Keenan, Opening Statement, 3.

  63. 63.

    Keenan, Opening Statement, 20.

  64. 64.

    Simpson, Law, War and Crime, 13.

  65. 65.

    International Military Tribunal, Trial of Major War Criminals, 102.

  66. 66.

    International Military Tribunal, Trial of Major War Criminals, 100.

  67. 67.

    International Military Tribunal, Trial of Major War Criminals, 127.

  68. 68.

    International Military Tribunal, Trial of Major War Criminals, 119.

  69. 69.

    International Military Tribunal, Trial of Major War Criminals, 130.

  70. 70.

    International Military Tribunal, Trial of Major War Criminals, 136.

  71. 71.

    Keenan, Opening Statement, 35.

  72. 72.

    Keenan, Opening Statement, 35.

  73. 73.

    Keenan, Opening Statement, 52.

  74. 74.

    Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust (New York: Cornell University Press, 1989), x. (Emphasis in original.)

  75. 75.

    Robert Shnayerson, “Judgement at Nuremberg,” Smithsonian (1996): 136.

  76. 76.

    International Military Tribunal, Trial of Major War Criminals, 112.

  77. 77.

    International Military Tribunal, Trial of Major War Criminals, 105.

  78. 78.

    International Military Tribunal, Trial of Major War Criminals, 115.

  79. 79.

    International Military Tribunal, Trial of Major War Criminals, 100.

  80. 80.

    Keenan, Opening Statement, 1.

  81. 81.

    Keenan, Opening Statement, 2.

  82. 82.

    Bauman, Modernity, 19.

  83. 83.

    Roger Griffin, The Nature of Fascism (London and New York: Routledge, 1993), 111.

  84. 84.

    John Gray, Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia (London: Penguin, 2007), 55–56 & 62.

  85. 85.

    Barry Buzan and George Lawson, The Global Transformation: History, Modernity and the Making of International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 42; see also B.V.A. Röling and Antonio Cassese, The Tokyo Trial and Beyond: Reflections of a Peacemonger (Cambridge: Polity, 1994), 73.

  86. 86.

    Bauman, Modernity, xii.

  87. 87.

    International Military Tribunal, Trial of Major War Criminals, 105.

  88. 88.

    International Military Tribunal, Trial of Major War Criminals, 107.

  89. 89.

    International Military Tribunal, Trial of Major War Criminals, 112.

  90. 90.

    Keenan, Opening Statement, 36.

  91. 91.

    Keenan, Opening Statement, 52.

  92. 92.

    International Military Tribunal, Trial of Major War Criminals, 99.

  93. 93.

    Keenan, Opening Statement, 3.

  94. 94.

    Keenan, Opening Statement, 2.

  95. 95.

    Keenan, Opening Statement, 56.

References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Defence and Security Studies, Massey University, Auckland, New Zealand

    Damien Rogers

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  1. Damien Rogers
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Rogers, D. (2018). Opening Statements at Nuremberg and Tokyo. In: Law, Politics and the Limits of Prosecuting Mass Atrocity. Human Rights Interventions. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-60994-2_4

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