World War II Trials
War Crimes Trials Other World War II Trials
Introduction to World War II Trials
Another war crimes trial was held under international authority in Tokyo. The International Military Tribunal for the Far East was constituted under the authority of a charter promulgated on January 19, 1946, by General Douglas MacArthur, supreme commander for the Allied Powers. Many provisions of the charter were adapted from those of the London Agreement.
The Tokyo trial opened on May 3, 1946, and held its final session on November 12, 1948. The conclusions reached by the 11-nation tribunal were generally parallel to those embodied in the judgment given in Nürnberg. Of the 28 defendants named in the indictment, seven were condemned to death by hanging, and all but two of the others were sentenced to life imprisonment. The trial of Japanese general Yamashita Tomoyuki was important in establishing the principle of “command responsibility”-the duty of a military or civilian commander to prevent military personnel from committing war crimes and crimes against humanity. This principle resurfaced more than 50 years later in the trial of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milo_evi_.
Many other trials of alleged war criminals were held by tribunals constituted by the governments of the countries that had been occupied in whole or in part by Germany or Japan during World War II. In addition, military tribunals in the British and American zones of occupation in Germany tried Germans under the laws of war. Numerous trials of Japanese military officers were held also in the Philippines and Australia and by American military courts on Japanese territory. For the most part, these trials were based on alleged violations of the laws and customs of war, and did not involve the crimes against peace and crimes against humanity that had constituted an important part of the Nürnberg proceedings.
Alleged World War II criminals were brought to trial under national laws long after the end of the war. In 1960 the Nazi official Adolf Eichmann, who had been a member of the German SS and an organizer of anti-Semitic activities, was captured as a war criminal in Argentina by Israeli agents (see Anti-Semitism). Taken to Jerusalem, he was tried and condemned the following year and executed in 1962. In 1987 a French court convicted Klaus Barbie, a notorious German Gestapo officer, of crimes against humanity and sentenced him to life imprisonment. Other trials of French collaborators with Nazi Germany followed in the 1990s. In 1999 Polish-born former police officer Anthony Sawoniuk was convicted under the British War Crimes Act of 1991 of murdering Jews in Nazi-occupied Domachëvo, now in Belarus, during World War II. Sawoniuk was sentenced to life in prison. ” (1)
Resources
Notes and References
- Information about World War II Trials in the Encarta Online Encyclopedia
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