WI War Crimes Trial of WW1 more like Nuremberg?

The Leipzig War Crimes Trials held in 1921 to punish German soldiers for war crimes was a failure.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leipzig_War_Crimes_Trials


The Treaty of the Versailles stipulated the Allies had the legal right and authority to try German soldiers for war crimes but extraditing the offenders and especially the Kaiser (fled to neutral Netherlands) couldn't be done.

So let's look at a few things:

1. What if German soldiers get tried and convicted of war crimes? What effects would their convictions and possible executions have on WW2 and the Holocaust? Are they butterflied away or become more intense?

2. Let's say the Kaiser is convicted of crimes and is executed (hanging, firing squad, the electric chair, etc) - what would be the short-term and long-term effects, especially on WW2?
 
Not sure about soldiers and politicians but I doubt that Brits would be very willingful commit trial against former monarch. Brits have already expericens on their own history for executing monarch and last tsar was killed with his family only few years earlier. Brits might feel killing of royal very bad idea (probably it would be).
 
The Leipzig War Crimes Trials held in 1921 to punish German soldiers for war crimes was a failure.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leipzig_War_Crimes_Trials


The Treaty of the Versailles stipulated the Allies had the legal right and authority to try German soldiers for war crimes but extraditing the offenders and especially the Kaiser (fled to neutral Netherlands) couldn't be done.

So let's look at a few things:

1. What if German soldiers get tried and convicted of war crimes? What effects would their convictions and possible executions have on WW2 and the Holocaust? Are they butterflied away or become more intense?

2. Let's say the Kaiser is convicted of crimes and is executed (hanging, firing squad, the electric chair, etc) - what would be the short-term and long-term effects, especially on WW2?
They also could convict German Generals, the crown prince of Hohenzollern, etc.
 
They also could convict German Generals, the crown prince of Hohenzollern, etc.

Why they would convice the crown prince beside that he led troops in Belgium? And I highly doubt that Entente is going hang Kaiser or his family members. Even Napoleon wasn't hanged so I can't see them doing that with any Hohenzollerns.

And with Wilhelm II problem is that he is in neutral nation which is not going hande him and I doubt that France and UK care enough that they would try pressure or even invade Netherlands.
 
Not sure about soldiers and politicians but I doubt that Brits would be very willingful commit trial against former monarch. Brits have already expericens on their own history for executing monarch and last tsar was killed with his family only few years earlier. Brits might feel killing of royal very bad idea (probably it would be).

From George Orwell...

Of the outbreak of war I have three vivid memories which, being petty and irrelevant, are uninfluenced by anything that has come later. One is of the cartoon of the ‘German Emperor’ (I believe the hated name ‘Kaiser’ was not popularized till a little later) that appeared in the last days of July. People were mildly shocked by this guying of royalty (‘But he's such a handsome man, really!’) although we were on the edge of war.

link
 
They also could convict German Generals, the crown prince of Hohenzollern, etc.
Great. And british admirals, french generals, serbian politicians.

The thing was a loose-loose proposition, and should not have existed in the first place. Or conducted by neutral parties against all participants (and prosecute for example french POW camp guards).
As it was, the entire thing was quietly shelved because it opened a huge can of worms (which would remain unopend until the Nazis demonstrated that, yes, evil for the sake of evil exists). I can (and will) find dirt on even the cleanest hero - since war is inherently dirty and messy. If you prosecute, you must prosecute even the winners.

Else you dress up victors' justice and are promoting the "rule of the strong" and should hope that you are never have to play the part of the "weak".
 
1. What if German soldiers get tried and convicted of war crimes? What effects would their convictions and possible executions have on WW2 and the Holocaust? Are they butterflied away or become more intense?

They are turned into heroes and martyrs of Germany, of course. It's not as if Horst Wessel was a saint, and yet he was a Nazi martyr. Avenging those trials becomes one of the tenets of the interwar German militarists, and of course, then, of the Nazis.

2. Let's say the Kaiser is convicted of crimes and is executed (hanging, firing squad, the electric chair, etc) - what would be the short-term and long-term effects, especially on WW2?

That actually makes a return to monarchy, with his son as the obvious candidate, something of a slim possibility. The old bull, of course, is a martyr as above.
 
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