Trial by Fury

President Roosevelt's proposition for the trial and punishment of war criminals, set down in concrete form, and prepared for administration by Professor Sheldon Glueck, paves the way for a distorted "war trial" and a rightfully indignant Germany akin to that which followed World War I. Of the 900 men accused in the original Allied list of 1918, only 45 were included in the abridged "test" list presented to the court at Leipzig. When the trials finally got under way in 1921, two and a half years after the Armistice, only twelve men were actually tried, and six convicted. None of the heads of the German and Austrian governments nor any of their important military leaders were ever brought to trial, while a broken and beaten Germany was forced to assume sole guilt for the bloody holocaust.

The execution of President Roosevelt's suggestion, as set down by Professor Glueck, would of necessity force the placing of the war guilt on the Axis nations, since, under his plan, no members of the United Nations would be tried for war crimes. In view of the pre-war manipulations of Messrs. Chamberlain and Bonnet, who represented the temper of Britain and France at the time, such a stand would be both false and farcical. The trial of men for actual war crimes would involve various legal technicalities, such as the definition of a "war crime" and the decision as to whether subordinates should be held for crimes committed by order of their superior officers.

But it is the duty of the Allied Nations to see that the post-war world is free from the evil influences of Nazism and Fascism, and that the Axis leaders are not allowed to rise to positions of power again. This can be accomplished by arresting and imprisoning for life the leaders of the Axis nations and their Quisling representatives in the occupied countries. Any attempt at specifically fixing the war guilt and providing punishment for war crimes will only result in a jumble of conflicting ideas and provide a source of ridicule for posterity.