MILLIONS had died, cities lay in ruins, and vile crimes almost beyond imagining had been uncovered. Small wonder a cry for vengeance went up at the end of the Second World War.
The Allies decided the main Nazis should be publicly tried, at Nuremberg. But, 60 years on, uncomfortable questions hang over the hearings - such as, were the right men on trial, and did the right ones hang?
One of those in the dock was derided for his defence, essentially that he wasn't very important, and the main players were already dead.
But with Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, Bormann and Heydrich gone, there weren't too many leading Nazis at Nuremberg. Of them, Hess was clearly mentally ill, and even Goering had been marginalised.
Ironically, Speer, mastermind of Germany's war economy (helped by slave labour), was spared the rope, while Keitel and Jodl, staff officers who implemented Hitler's military diktats, hanged.
Goering was the "star" of the trial, tormenting prosecutors and enjoying himself while dodging charges - until he was implicated in the shooting of POWs after the Great Escape. He still cheated the hangman, by taking poison.
There is no doubting Nuremberg's historical importance. For instance, the shocking testimony of Hoess, commandant of Auchwitz (bizarrely present as a witness, not a defendant), surely helped create our vision of his camp as the hellish epicentre of the Holocaust.
James Owen has done an excellent job of explaining Nuremberg, summarising the issues, and editing the transcripts of the lengthy and exhaustive trial into excerpts which go straight to the dark heart of the matter.
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