Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: Nuremberg

  • Acceptance Speech on Receiving Erasmus Prize

    Your Majesty, your Royal Highnesses, distinguished guests and friends,

    You honor me by your presence and I am deeply moved. Allow me to convey my gratitude by sharing some personal experiences which may reflect the values of Erasmus, whose name we here commemorate.

    My life was shaped in the crucible of wars. The First World War caused my family to flee to America. My destiny was shaped by the impact of the Second World War. Three goals became the focus of my life:

    • trying to bring perpetrators of war crimes to justice
    • caring for survivors
    • trying to prevent future wars

    As soon as my studies were completed, I enlisted in the United States army. In due course, I landed on the beaches of Normandy and participated in every major battle. As a war crimes investigator in the army of General Patton, I joined in the liberation of many Nazi concentration camps and witnessed indescribable horrors. After the war ended, I was discharged as a sergeant of infantry and awarded five battle stars for not being killed or wounded. Not all wounds are visible.

    I never speak of “winning” a war. I learned that the only victor in war is death.

    The next phase of my life was helping to bring to justice some of those responsible for the aggressions and atrocities. The famous Nuremberg trial by the international military tribunal was followed by twelve subsequent trials. I was appointed chief prosecutor in what was probably the biggest murder trial in history. Twenty-two Nazi leaders of extermination squads called Einsatzgruppen were convicted of deliberately murdering over a million innocent men, women and children. I was then 27 years old and it was my first case.

    The victims were slain because they did not share the race, faith or ideology of their executioners. I thought murdering thousands of children and all their relatives for such cruel reasons was a very terrible thing. I have never lost that feeling. Punishing criminals must not obscure the need to care for their innocent victims. In 1948, I became the director of restitution programs to recover heirless properties for the benefit of needy survivors. That led to an additional assignment as counsel in negotiating a very sensitive “reparations treaty” between West Germany, Israel and major Jewish charitable organizations. Millions of Nazi victims, regardless of persuasion, Jews and non-Jews alike, have benefited from the unprecedented indemnification laws which were negotiated in secret here in The Hague in Kasteel Oud Wassenaar in 1952.

    Appreciation belongs primarily to German chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, who, as a devout catholic, proclaimed that amends had to be made for the terrible crimes committed in the name of the German people.

    My files dealing with my war crimes and restitution have been donated to the US Holocaust Museum in Washington. My books and lectures are available free on my website and the internet under a new United Nations audio-visual program. My Erasmus prize will all go for peace purposes.

    Let me spend the few remaining minutes on what I consider the most important phase of my life and that is trying to prevent war-making itself. At Nuremberg war-making ceased to be regarded as a national right but was condemned as “the supreme international crime”. There has never been a war without atrocities. Illegal war-making is the biggest atrocity of all.

    The best way to protect the brave young people who serve in the military of all nations is to try to eliminate war. The UN charter prohibits the use of armed force except under very limited circumstances. It is high time for the powerful nations that control the Security Council to remember and respect their basic legal obligations to all nations.

    It was made crystal clear at Nuremberg, and affirmed by the UN General Assembly, that law must apply equally to everyone. It is very dangerous when any person, or any nation, takes the law into its own hands. In a world seething with incredible destructive capabilities, there is no international dispute so overwhelming that it could justify the illegal use of armed force. Law is always better than war.

    Many well-intentioned people believe that war can never be stopped since it is ordained as part of some eternal plan. From the unbelievable horrors of war that I have personally witnessed, I cannot believe the cruelties I have seen were divinely inspired. I share the view of Erasmus and religious leaders of many faiths who hold that we are all members of one human family and must learn to live in peace and dignity regardless of our race or creed. I recall the words of my supreme military commander, Dwight D. Eisenhower, when he became president of the United States: “The world no longer has a choice between force and law. If civilization is to survive, it must choose the rule of law.”

    It is difficult and takes time to change the heart and mind of persons with deeply entrenched and cherished ideals for which they are ready to kill and die. But it can surely be done. The early United States constitution denied all women the right to vote or own property. White men felt they had a right to own black people as slaves; not long ago, it would have been unthinkable that the United States would elect a non-white president, but take note: The world has changed!

    The world has changed and is ever-changing. National laws are being changed to conform to international obligations. There has been a gradual awakening of the human conscience.

    Whether aggression is punishable by an international court will be challenged at the International Criminal Court review conference next April. I believe we owe it to the future and to the memory of all who perished in wars, to go forward from Nuremberg and not backward. Even if only a small number of wars are deterred by the threat of punishment, it will surely be worthwhile.

    The stubborn belief that the human mind is incapable of creating an improved social order is a self-defeating prophecy of doom. It ignores the potential of new technologies. Holland has become the international law capital of the world. But it is a work in progress, the values which inspired Erasmus to speak out against abuses by vested authority are still needed today. Fear and hatred that fuels violence can best be conquered by reason, tolerance, compassion and a willingness to compromise that should be taught everywhere at every level of learning, the glorification of war must be replaced by the glorification of peace.

    I have tried to carry forward the main lesson of Nuremberg that aggression is the supreme international crime. I consider myself a realistic optimist: realist because I see the problems; optimist because I see the progress. The international community is still in its formative stage and there has been more progress in the last half century than in all of human history.

    I am aware that I will not live to see the goal of abolishing all wars. But I will be content to know that perhaps I will have helped to move closer to that ideal. To young people I say: “Never give up. Try harder.” Have the courage to speak up for what you know is right. You will find contentment in the knowledge that you have done your best to make this a more humane and peaceful world.

    I thank you all for the honor and privilege of addressing you.

  • Letter to President Clinton from Nuremberg Chief Prosecutor Ben Ferencz

    President William Jefferson Clinton
    The White House, Pennsylvania Ave.
    Washington D.C. 20500

    December 6, 2000

    Dear Mr. President:

    Over 53 years ago, I was the Chief Prosecutor in a trial brought by the United States in Nuremberg against 22 SS leaders who were convicted of murdering over a million people in cold blood. I fought in every campaign in Europe in World War II and gathered evidence in Nazi death camps. Since then, my life has been dedicated to making this a more humane and peaceful world. On this, “Veteran’s Day” I appeal to you as President and Commander-in-Chief, to exercise your constitutional authority by signing the Rome Treaty for the creation of an International Criminal Court (ICC).

    I recall how thousands cheered at the Dodd Center in Connecticut in 1995, when you said: “Nuremberg was a crucial first step… Now it falls to our generation to make good on its promise..we have to do it,… we must do it…We have an obligation to carry forward the lessons of Nuremberg. ” When you addressed the General Assembly of the United Nations on Sept.22, 1997, you told the world:…: “before the century ends, we should establish a permanent international court to prosecute the most serious violations of humanitarian law.”

    After you sign the treaty, it will be up to your successor to determine whether further measures may be warranted before submission of the treaty to the Senate for its consent before it can be ratified. There will be ample time to debate the details. Your signing now will be an important affirmation that you have not abandoned principles you have so eloquently enunciated. It will help allay fears of small States that feel threatened by misguided Congressional proposals to impose sanctions against any nation that dares to support the ICC. It will uphold the integrity and reputation of our government as a leading champion of the rule of law.

    I am mindful and respectful of objections raised by some members of Congress and the Pentagon. As a 1943 Harvard law graduate and author of countless books and articles on this subject (See my web-site,) it is my considered judgment that such fears are exaggerated and misplaced. The treaty has been found acceptable by many of our staunchest allies. A comprehensive American Academy of Arts and Sciences study, including leading U.S. military and academic experts, concluded that failure to sign now “will miss an opportunity of serious dimensions. And the loss will have an impact on U.S. national interests far beyond the work of prosecuting war crimes.” With every good wish,

    Sincerely,
    Benjamin Ferencz

  • Nuremberg and Nuclear Weapons

    The principal message of the Nuremberg trials is that individuals are responsible for what they do, and will be held accountable for committing serious crimes under international law. At Nuremberg, these serious crimes included crimes against peace (that is, planning, preparing for, or participating in acts of aggressive warfare), war crimes, and crimes against humanity.

    One of the great ironies of history or perhaps it is not such a great irony is that the Charter establishing the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg was signed on August 8, 1945. That was just three months after the German surrender. More importantly, it was just two days after the first nuclear weapon was used in warfare on the city of Hiroshima, and one day prior to a nuclear weapon being used on the city of Nagasaki. The nuclear weapon used on Hiroshima, with an equivalent force of some 15 kilotons of TNT, killed some 90,000 people immediately and some 140,000 by the end of 1945. The bomb dropped on Nagasaki, with an equivalent force of some 20 kilotons of TNT, killed some 40,000 people immediately and some 70,000 by the end of 1945.

    It has been pointed out that the number of people who died immediately from the use of each of these nuclear weapons was less than the number of people who died in Tokyo on the night of March 9-10, 1945 as a result of U.S. bombing raids. This number is estimated at approximately 100,000. The major difference between the Tokyo bombings and those of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is that the former took nearly a thousand sorties to accomplish, while the destruction of the latter two cities took only one bomb each.

    I think it is reasonable to speculate that if the Germans had had two or three atomic bombs, as we did at that time, and had used them on European cities prior to being defeated in the Second World War, we would have attempted to hold accountable those who created, authorized, and carried out these bombings. We would likely have considered the use of these weapons on cities by the Nazi leaders as among the most serious of their crimes.

    The irony of history, of course, is that the Germans did not develop nor use atomic weapons, and thus this issue never came before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, or before any other international tribunal. The record of the past 50 years reflects the consequences of this lack of accountability, namely, the nuclear arms race pursued by the United States and the former Soviet Union, which lasted until the end of the Cold War in approximately 1990.

    The question which I want to address is not whether war crimes were committed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Under the rules of international humanitarian law they were, and they were also committed by the bombings of London, Coventry, Hamburg, Dresden and Tokyo. The primary targets of all these bombings were civilians, and the indiscriminate killing of civilians has always in modern times been understood to be a clear violation of the laws of war.

    Nuclear Weapons and International Law

    The more relevant question has to do with where we stand today. Not long ago, on July 8, 1996, the International Court of Justice in the Hague issued an opinion on the legality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons. Actually, two questions were placed before the Court for advisory opinions. The first question, posed by the World Health Organization in May 1993, asked: “In view of the health and environmental effects, would the use of nuclear weapons by a state in war or other armed conflict be a breach of its obligations under international law?”

    The second question, put to the Court by the General Assembly of the United Nations in December 1994, asked: “Is the threat or the use of nuclear weapons in any circumstances permitted under international law?”

    The International Court of Justice found that the question asked by the World Health Organization, as a legal question, fell outside the scope of activities of the organization, and thus declined to accept jurisdiction. On the question posed by the United Nations General Assembly, however, the Court did find jurisdiction, and issued an advisory opinion.

    In a multi-part answer to the question, the Court found the following: “…that the threat or use of nuclear weapons would generally be contrary to the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict, and in particular the principles and rules of humanitarian law.

    “However, in view of the current state of international law, and of the elements of fact at its disposal, the Court cannot conclude definitively whether the threat or use of nuclear weapons would be lawful or unlawful in an extreme circumstance of self-defence, in which the very survival of a State would be at stake.”

    In reaching this opinion, the Court dramatically reduced the possible circumstances in which nuclear weapons could be threatened or used in conformity with international law. The Court left open only the slim possibility of legality under “an extreme circumstance of self-defense, in which the very survival of a State would be at stake.” Even in this circumstance, the Court did not say that such use would be legal; it said only that it could not determine legality under these conditions. Judge Bedjaoui, the president of the Court, said in his declaration upon releasing the Court’s opinion, “I cannot insist strongly enough on the fact that the inability of the Court to go beyond the statement it made can in no way be interpreted as a partially-opened door through which it recognizes the legality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons.”

    Judge Bedjaoui went further to describe nuclear weapons as “blind weapons” that “destabilize, by their very nature, humanitarian law, the law of distinguishing in the use of weapons.” He continued, “Nuclear weapons, absolute evil, destabilize humanitarian law in so far as the law of the lesser evil. Thus, the very existence of nuclear weapons constitutes a great defiance (challenge) to humanitarian law itself…. Nuclear war and humanitarian law seem, consequently, two antithesis which radically exclude each other, the existence of one necessarily supposing the non-existence of the other.”

    Where does this leave us today? Although the opinion of the Court is an advisory opinion, it is the most authoritative statement of international law on this question, and must be taken seriously. Thus far, however, there have been no statements made by any of the declared or undeclared nuclear weapons states indicating that they plan any changes in their nuclear policies as a result of the Court’s opinion.

    Individual Accountability

    We know what the Principles of Nuremberg tell us about individual accountability. The primary principle is that “Any person who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefor and liable to punishment.” The fact that there is no penalty for the act under internal law does not relieve the person who committed the act from responsibility under international law. Nor does the fact that the person acted as a Head of State or as a responsible government official relieve that person of responsibility. Nor does the fact that the person acted pursuant to superior orders, so long as a choice was in fact possible to him, relieve him of responsibility.

    It was the United States, along with the U.K., France, and Russia, that created the Nuremberg Principles after the Second World War by holding Nazi and other Axis leaders accountable for their crimes under international law. I submit that if we want to create a world community that lives under international law in the 21st Century, we must apply the Nuremberg Principles to one and all, equally and without prejudice. That means we must apply these Principles to ourselves as well as to others. If the threat or use of nuclear weapons is, in fact, illegal under international law in virtually every conceivable circumstance, then we must act accordingly and neither use nor threaten the use of these weapons. Instead, we must dismantle our nuclear arsenal subject to agreement with other nuclear weapons states. In the meantime, we must explain to all military personnel with responsibilities for nuclear weapons the criminality under international law attendant to the threat or use of these weapons.

    Military organizations must operate under the law, and that clearly includes the international law of armed conflict. If military organizations do not operate under the law, then are they any better than state-organized thugs? It was for violating the laws of war at My Lai that Lt. Calley was tried and convicted. Lt. Calley’s crimes, terrible though they were, would pale in comparison to the crime of again using nuclear weapons on cities filled with innocent people.

    The International Court of Justice added to their opinion a clarification of Article VI of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The Court unanimously found that: “There exists an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control.”

    The Court has clearly indicated that the nuclear weapons states have an obligation to negotiate in good faith not only for nuclear disarmament, but for nuclear disarmament “in all its aspects” and to bring these negotiations to a conclusion. In the aftermath of the Cold War, we have been moving far too slowly to attain this goal. It is a necessary goal so that no other city will ever again have to face the consequences of what happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the future of humanity will not be jeopardized.

    The Need for a Permanent International Criminal Court

    Even if the threat or use of nuclear weapons is unlawful under international law, however, there currently exists no tribunal where persons committing such acts can be brought to account. One of the great shortcomings of the current international institutional structure is the lack of a permanent International Criminal Court. Two Ad Hoc Tribunals have been created by the United Nations Security Council one for the former Yugoslavia and one for Rwanda. The jurisdiction of both of these tribunals, however, is limited by time and space. It is perhaps ironic that while the effects of nuclear weapons are unlimited by either time or space, the jurisdiction of our international criminal tribunals is so limited.

    Were nuclear weapons to be used by accident or design, the consequences would be horrible beyond our deepest fears. Nazis and other war criminals were convicted and punished in part for bringing human beings to the incinerators of the Holocaust. Nuclear weapons may be conceived of as portable incinerators portable crematoria, if you will that bring incinerators to the people. In my view, the silence of the American, Russian, British, French, and Chinese people in the face of these potentially genocidal or omnicidal weapons is as disquieting as the silence of the Germans in the face of Nazi atrocities. Yet none of the people in countries possessing nuclear weapons today are facing the same fearful authoritarian rule that the Nazis imposed upon the Germans during World War II.

    For many, perhaps most, people in nuclear weapons states today, nuclear weapons are not perceived as a critical issue. They are largely ignored. However, if they were to be used again, I think future historians if there were any would be very critical of our lack of commitment to ridding the world of these terrible weapons.

    We have the opportunity, in fact the responsibility under the Nuremberg Principles, to speak out against these genocidal weapons, but for the most part we do not do so. We must break the silence that surrounds our reliance upon these weapons of mass destruction. A hopeful sign recently occurred at the State of the World Forum in San Francisco when General Lee Butler, a former commander of the U.S. Strategic Command, broke his personal silence and made a ringing plea to abolish nuclear weapons. “We can do better,” he said, “than condone a world in which nuclear weapons are enshrined as the ultimate arbiter of conflict. The price already paid is too dear, the risks run too great. The nuclear beast must be chained, its soul expunged, its lair laid waste. The task is daunting but we cannot shrink from it. The opportunity may not come again.”

    It is within our grasp to end the nuclear weapons era, and begin the 21st Century with a reaffirmation of the Nuremberg Principles.

    Steps That Need To Be Taken

    1. The following confidence building measures proposed by the Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons:

    • Taking nuclear forces off alert;
    • Removal of warheads from delivery vehicles;
    • Ending deployment of non-strategic nuclear weapons;
    • Initiating negotiations to further reduce United States and Russian nuclear arsenals; and
    • Agreement amongst the nuclear weapons states of reciprocal no-first-use undertakings, and of a non-use undertaking by them in relation to the non-nuclear weapons states.

    2. International agreement by the year 2000 on a Nuclear Weapons Convention that, under strict international control, would eliminate all nuclear weapons within a reasonable period of time and prohibit their possession.

    3. The establishment by treaty of a permanent International Criminal Court to hold all individuals, regardless of their rank or nationality, accountable for acts constituting crimes under international law. Considerable progress has been made in preparing such a treaty at the United Nations. It may be hoped that this treaty will be ready to be opened for signatures in 1998, and certainly by 1999 when a third International Peace Conference is convened in the Hague.