594 Chapter 29
partition of Germany. The Allies agreed that Germans
must “atone for the terrible crimes committed under the
leadership of those whom, in the hour of their success,
they openly approved and blindly obeyed.” The
boundary between a reduced Germany and a recreated
Poland would be defined by two rivers, the Oder-
Neisse Line. Much of historic Prussia thus became part
of Poland.
The Potsdam Protocol also stated the right of the
victors to hold trials of war criminals. Similar trials had
been planned after World War I, when the Allies had
drawn up a list of 890 people to be tried, beginning
with Kaiser Wilhelm II. But the trials begun at Leipzig
in 1921 collapsed when the German high court ac-
cepted the exculpatory plea of individuals who were
“just following orders.” The Potsdam Protocol avoided
this problem by chartering an Allied tribunal to sit at
Nuremberg and by defining the crimes that would
come before it (see document 29.3). This included
“crimes against humanity” for acts committed against
civilian populations. Twenty-two Nazi leaders were ac-
cordingly tried at the Nuremberg Trials of 1945–46,
and twelve were sentenced to death. Hitler, Goebbels,
and Himmler were all dead, but Göring and Ribbentrop
were among the prominent Nazis at Nuremberg. Oth-
ers were tried in the east, and war crimes trials contin-
ued in the postwar era: Israel convicted and executed
one of the architects of the Holocaust, Adolf Eich-
mann, in 1962; a French court convicted the Gestapo
chief in Lyons (Klaus Barbie) as late as 1987, then tried
a Vichy police official, Maurice Papon, in 1997. Similar
trials (and informal revenge) covered the war zone. In
France, eight hundred Vichy collaborationists were exe-
cuted during the Liberation. The hero of World War I,
Marshal Pétain, was convicted of treason for his collab-
oration with the Nazis; although de Gaulle spared Pé-
tain’s life in respect for his age and his historic role in
World War I, Pierre Laval was executed. No court ap-
plied the Nuremburg precedent to other conflicts until
1996 when the United Nations began war crimes trials
for atrocities committed in the Bosnian War.
An international conference at San Francisco in
1945 adopted the Dumbarton Oaks plan and founded
the United Nations, to replace the League of Nations
(which had been so ineffectual in preventing World
War II) and “to save succeeding generations from the
scourge of war.” Fifty-one countries (excluding the Axis
powers) committed themselves to the idea of “collec-
tive security.” The UN Charter created a General As-
sembly, to represent all countries and to debate
international issues. Primary responsibility for keeping
the peace, however, was given to a Security Council
with five permanent members (the United States, the
USSR, Britain, France, and China) and six elected
members. The Security Council chose a secretary-
general, the chief administrative officer of the UN who
could bring issues to the council but had little power to
act. Many UN bodies were subsequently created, be-DOCUMENT 29.3
The Charter of the Nuremberg
Tribunal (1945)
The following acts, or any of them, are crimes
coming within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal for
which there shall be individual responsibility:
(a) Crimes against peace.Namely, planning,
preparation, initiation, or waging of a war of ag-
gression or a war in violation of international
treaties, agreements, or assurances, or participation
in a common plan or conspiracy for the accom-
plishment of any of the foregoing.
(b) War crimes.Namely, violations of the laws
or customs of war. Such violations shall include,
but not be limited to, murder, ill treatment, or de-
portation to slave labor or for any other purpose of
civilian population of or in occupied territory,
murder or ill treatment of prisoners of war or per-
sons on the seas, killing of hostages, plunder of
public or private property, wanton destruction of
cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justi-
fied by military necessity.
(c) Crimes against humanity.Namely, murder,
extermination, enslavement, deportation, and
other inhumane acts committed against any civil-
ian population before or during the war or perse-
cutions on political, racial, or religious grounds in
execution of or in connection with any crime
within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal, whether or
not in violation of the domestic law of the country
where perpetrated...
The fact that the defendant acted pursuant to
order of his government or of a superior shall not
free him from responsibility but may be consid-
ered in mitigation of punishment if the Tribunal
determines that justice so requires.
Potsdam Protocol, Article 6. In U.S. Department of State,
Bulletin, 13:320 (August 12, 1945): 224.