Nuremberg-style trials of historic war criminals

As the Sanhedrin represents the very people of Judea and the Jewish G-d, I see very little that would allow an international tribunal to be involved. It's an awful shame there is so much Christianity-centrism on AH, makes Jews like me feel very unwelcome when people post as if Christianity is absolute truth (which by default means Jews like me are wrong).


I think a number of factors could have made it more international. Perhaps if Adiabene got more heavily involved beyond merely sending volunteers, or if one of Vespasian's imperial rivals were more successful in pursuing their claim and cut a deal with the rebel leaders to turn him over to them if they won.

Nice to see another Jew here.
 
If you could have the leaderships of the genocidal regimes that predate the Nazis prosecuted, tried, and sentenced by Nuremberg-style tribunals, which ones would you prioritize?

Genghisids are the obvious ones, e.g.,
Chorasmian Tribunal - defendants: Genghis Khan and his henchmen
Caspian Tribunal - defendants: Timur and his henchmen
Baghdad Tribunal - defendants: leadership of Ilkhanate
Kievan Rus' Tribunal - defendants: leadership of Golden Horde ‎
.....

Also feel free to join the defense counsel and speak on behalf of the defendants.

Frederick the Great as a defendant for unlawfully attacking Austrian Silesia resulting (in Europe) in a seven year long proto-world war with appently 1 Million casulties.
 
Honestly I could see the French Revolutionary Republic c.1794 trying something like this if they occupied the Papal States.

The Italians are not the French and such extremes would just put them in the opposite camp (see the Peasant Uprising in Naples under Cardinal Ruffo). Also in the puppet republics the French set-up in Italy, acknowledged the Catholic Church (and many the locals put in charge were nominal Catholics at least, this is not a situation like French where the elite detested the Church and wanted to do away with it).

Speaking of the French, how about the French Marshals (particularly Murat) for their behaviour in Spain? This is after the Hundred Days of course. I would even love to see if Napoleon (who gave the orders and ultimately took responsibility in his will) tried for Spain, the Invasion of Moscow and perhaps the judicial murder of the Duc D'Enghien after being illegally kidnapped in an allied country and given a show trial that lasted a few hours with no defense counsel, which even those around Napoleon said was a stupid move (and even Josephine publicly begged him not to do it).
 
Speaking of the French, how about the French Marshals (particularly Murat) for their behaviour in Spain? This is after the Hundred Days of course. I would even love to see if Napoleon (who gave the orders and ultimately took responsibility in his will) tried for Spain, the Invasion of Moscow and perhaps the judicial murder of the Duc D'Enghien after being illegally kidnapped in an allied country and given a show trial that lasted a few hours with no defense counsel, which even those around Napoleon said was a stupid move (and even Josephine publicly begged him not to do it).

Speaking of Spain: defendant is the inquisition, the French Empire is the prosecutor.
 
If you could have the leaderships of the genocidal regimes that predate the Nazis prosecuted, tried, and sentenced by Nuremberg-style tribunals, which ones would you prioritize?

Genghisids are the obvious ones, e.g.,
Chorasmian Tribunal - defendants: Genghis Khan and his henchmen
Caspian Tribunal - defendants: Timur and his henchmen
Baghdad Tribunal - defendants: leadership of Ilkhanate
Kievan Rus' Tribunal - defendants: leadership of Golden Horde ‎
.....

Also feel free to join the defense counsel and speak on behalf of the defendants.

Various Hititte kings for ruthless conquest.

The murderer of Otzi the Iceman

Agamemnom and Menelaus for destroying Troja
 
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Ahem.

Having been a lawyer before I became an historian....

May we define our terms, please? Or at the very least hew to the terms proposed?

The initial post spoke of genocidal regimes and of Nuremberg-style IWCTs. Most of the responses seem to fail on both fronts. (Most of the incidents rightly condemned were not genocides, that is, the intentional destruction, in whole or in part, of a discrete and identifiable national, ethnic, racial, or religious group as such; most of tribunals proposed are not International War Crimes Tribunals; very few of the suggestions involve actual IWCTs trying actual genocides. Civil wars, Roman or American, are not genocides; suppressions of insurrection are not, absent other factors, genocide, which is why the Turks have been running the same baldly unconvincing defense for a century; wars of conquest for purposes other than the strictly genocidal may be war crimes, but they are not genocides.)

Accordingly, for example, a trial of the Ottoman government, of the CUP as an organization, and of Enver, Talaat, and Djemal as individuals, on charges arising from the Armenian Genocide, would fit the bill. (I imagine Secretary Bryan and Ambassador Morgenthau as part of the prosecution team: that Morgenthau was a witness in a way has never meant much in IWCT procedures, frankly. I have no idea who could appear for the defense.) So would a prosecution of Daesh and other Islamist groups for crimes against Shia, Yazidis, and the Christian minority. But many of the suggestions made above simply do not involve a genocide; do not involve a suggested IWCT or similar tribunal; or involve neither. I fear the thread is in consequence likely to degenerate into mere score-settling and virtue-signalling, condemning villains (whether villainous or not, and certainly regardless of whether they committed genocide) of each poster's choice.

I should note for the tetchy, the chip-shouldered, the chauvinistic, and the slower traffic, that where I say a trial could be had and charges brought, I am not - here, and now - stating my opinion of what the verdict ought to be, or presuming guilt. I am indicating instances where a trial before an international tribunal on allegations of crimes of genocide would be colorable. By the same token, I think the guilt of the Usual Suspects is of course blatant, and blatantly obvious.
 
Having been a lawyer before I became an historian....

May we define our terms, please? Or at the very least hew to the terms proposed?

The initial post spoke of genocidal regimes and of Nuremberg-style IWCTs. Most of the responses seem to fail on both fronts. (Most of the incidents rightly condemned were not genocides, that is, the intentional destruction, in whole or in part, of a discrete and identifiable national, ethnic, racial, or religious group as such; most of tribunals proposed are not International War Crimes Tribunals; very few of the suggestions involve actual IWCTs trying actual genocides. Civil wars, Roman or American, are not genocides; suppressions of insurrection are not, absent other factors, genocide, which is why the Turks have been running the same baldly unconvincing defense for a century; wars of conquest for purposes other than the strictly genocidal may be war crimes, but they are not genocides.)

Accordingly, for example, a trial of the Ottoman government, of the CUP as an organization, and of Enver, Talaat, and Djemal as individuals, on charges arising from the Armenian Genocide, would fit the bill. (I imagine Secretary Bryan and Ambassador Morgenthau as part of the prosecution team: that Morgenthau was a witness in a way has never meant much in IWCT procedures, frankly. I have no idea who could appear for the defense.) So would a prosecution of Daesh and other Islamist groups for crimes against Shia, Yazidis, and the Christian minority. But many of the suggestions made above simply do not involve a genocide; do not involve a suggested IWCT or similar tribunal; or involve neither. I fear the thread is in consequence likely to degenerate into mere score-settling and virtue-signalling, condemning villains (whether villainous or not, and certainly regardless of whether they committed genocide) of each poster's choice.

I should note for the tetchy, the chip-shouldered, the chauvinistic, and the slower traffic, that where I say a trial could be had and charges brought, I am not - here, and now - stating my opinion of what the verdict ought to be, or presuming guilt. I am indicating instances where a trial before an international tribunal on allegations of crimes of genocide would be colorable. By the same token, I think the guilt of the Usual Suspects is of course blatant, and blatantly obvious.

Since we're defining definitions now, I'd like to point out that genocide does not, and needs to stop being used in the vernacular, as meaning nationality, ethnic group, or anything other than race. There is ethnic cleansing for a different ethnic group. And yes, we Jews (with Arabs) are a different race despite well-intentioned PC propaganda to say otherwise as an apology for racial bigotry of the past. Catholics wiping out Protestants, Russians wiping out Finns, are not genocide. We need to stop the expanding of that term to where it now means any hate crime murder of one person against another person. It demeans and lessens what Jews and Romany (ie- "gypsies") went through in the Holocaust (which btw is a proper noun about a specific time in history, not a generic term for any genocide or ethnic cleansing or religious persecution).
 
Speaking of the French, how about the French Marshals (particularly Murat) for their behaviour in Spain? This is after the Hundred Days of course. I would even love to see if Napoleon (who gave the orders and ultimately took responsibility in his will) tried for Spain, the Invasion of Moscow and perhaps the judicial murder of the Duc D'Enghien after being illegally kidnapped in an allied country and given a show trial that lasted a few hours with no defense counsel, which even those around Napoleon said was a stupid move (and even Josephine publicly begged him not to do it).

If the French are to be tried for their wartime conduct, than surely the allies should answer for such atrocities as the British massacre of unarmed civilians in Copenhagen in 1807, and the support of Vendean terrorists.
 
Since we're defining definitions now, I'd like to point out that genocide does not, and needs to stop being used in the vernacular, as meaning nationality, ethnic group, or anything other than race. There is ethnic cleansing for a different ethnic group. And yes, we Jews (with Arabs) are a different race despite well-intentioned PC propaganda to say otherwise as an apology for racial bigotry of the past. Catholics wiping out Protestants, Russians wiping out Finns, are not genocide. We need to stop the expanding of that term to where it now means any hate crime murder of one person against another person. It demeans and lessens what Jews and Romany (ie- "gypsies") went through in the Holocaust (which btw is a proper noun about a specific time in history, not a generic term for any genocide or ethnic cleansing or religious persecution).

The official definition of genocide as per the UN is "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group", so Catholics wiping out Protestants or Russians enacting the ethnic cleansing of Finns would absolutely qualify.
 
The official definition of genocide as per the UN is "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group", so Catholics wiping out Protestants or Russians enacting the ethnic cleansing of Finns would absolutely qualify.

Oh, the UN, you mean the organization that is routinely anti-semitic and functions on a majority vote that can include the worst countries in the world on human rights? Yes, that's such a definitive organization to use. Give me a definition by the Anti-Defamation League that includes genocide as anything other than race. Don't come at me with UN definitions, that's insulting.
 
Oh, the UN, you mean the organization that is routinely anti-semitic and functions on a majority vote that can include the worst countries in the world on human rights? Yes, that's such a definitive organization to use. Give me a definition by the Anti-Defamation League that includes genocide as anything other than race. Don't come at me with UN definitions, that's insulting.

Okay, how exactly is the UN anti Semitic? Shockingly enough, not agreeing with literally everything Israel does does not make one anti Semitic.
 
I have a big feeling the Brits would try to try Napoleon for whatever reason.

For realsies, I nominate Cortès and especially Pizarro for genocide and slavery of utmost cruelty.

Voulet-Chanoine raised quite their share of eyebrows as well in more recent times
 
If the French are to be tried for their wartime conduct, than surely the allies should answer for such atrocities as the British massacre of unarmed civilians in Copenhagen in 1807, and the support of Vendean terrorists.

But its always the winners who try the losers and in this case the French ultimately lost.


Besides there is a case (and several historians have made it) that what was done by the Republic to their own citizens in the Vendee was genocide. Many in the Vendee today still believe it. And those like Hoche and even Napoleon who tried to make peace in the Vendee obviously believed that the policy of the Directory was just making it worse.
 
Oh, the UN, you mean the organization that is routinely anti-semitic and functions on a majority vote that can include the worst countries in the world on human rights? Yes, that's such a definitive organization to use. Give me a definition by the Anti-Defamation League that includes genocide as anything other than race. Don't come at me with UN definitions, that's insulting.
I understand that this is borderline necro, but I just couldn't resist responding to the despicable idea that only the deliberate mass murder of racial groups is genocide (despite the obvious etymology and what nearly every authority on the subject has thought over the last seventy years):
"Genocide, which is violence with the intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, is the most violent and devastating form of bias and hatred."
 
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