A modern criminal trial can be exceedingly inconvenient. The more fairly conducted it is, the less certain the outcome. The accuser can end up all but in the dock; the accused may walk away from a true bill. Churchill, well aware of this, wanted the Nazi leaders, when they were finally captured, to be taken out and shot. Roosevelt initially agreed. It was Stalin, who had found that trials could be exceedingly satisfactory in both procedure and outcome, who compelled first Roosevelt and then Churchill to take part in setting up the Nuremberg tribunal. Justice Robert Jackson, the US prosecutor, was in consequence able to describe the trial as 'one of the most significant tributes that power has ever paid to reason', and the British prosecutor, Sir Hartley Shawcross, to say without blushing: 'There are those who would perhaps say that these wretched men should have been dealt with summarily without trial . . . But that was not the view of the British government.'

LRB 21 July 2005 | PDF Download