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| Tega Adjara |
Among those seated in the dock were the Nazi generals, men of high command such as Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel and General Alfred Jodl, whose decisions had shaped the military machinery of the Third Reich. Their trials did not merely concern military misconduct; they forced the world to confront deeper questions about law, morality and history that continue to echo eight decades later.
As the tribunal declared in its final judgment on Oct. 1, 1946, “Crimes against international law are committed by men, not by abstract entities, and only by punishing individuals can the provisions of international law be enforced.” That single sentence transformed the moral landscape of justice forever.
Law: Justice beyond the battlefield
The Nuremberg trials were founded on the London Charter of Aug. 8, 1945, which defined the jurisdiction of the IMT. The charter introduced three principal categories of crimes: crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity. These categories were applied to military leaders who had planned, authorized or facilitated atrocities, thereby establishing a framework for individual accountability in international law.
Generals such as Keitel and Jodl were charged with planning aggressive wars and signing unlawful directives, including the Commissar Order and Barbarossa Decree, which authorized the killing of Soviet political officers and civilians. Both orders violated The Hague Conventions of 1907, which had codified rules of warfare.
At trial, the defendants argued they had acted under the compulsion of superior orders and that refusal would have been tantamount to treason. The tribunal rejected this plea, ruling that “obedience to orders may be considered in mitigation, but it is not a defence to crimes of this magnitude.”
Legally, Nuremberg was revolutionary. It declared that military service does not absolve moral and legal responsibility, and that the duty to obey the law of humanity transcends the duty to obey the law of one’s superiors.
Morality: The conflict between duty and conscience
The trials also tested the moral foundations of human conduct under tyranny. The Nazi regime had elevated obedience to a supreme virtue under the doctrine of the Führerprinzip, whereby Adolf Hitler’s will was absolute. Within this moral void, generals often conflated loyalty with righteousness.
The tribunal, however, refused to accept that moral agency could be extinguished by hierarchy. In the judgment against Alfred Jodl, the IMT wrote: “Jodl was fully aware of the nature and consequences of the orders he signed. His defence of military necessity cannot be sustained when the acts themselves are criminal.”
This moral reasoning transcended jurisprudence and reaffirmed the universal principle that individuals retain moral choice even within coercive systems. The philosopher Hannah Arendt later observed that totalitarian regimes thrive on the “banality of evil,” where ordinary men commit extraordinary crimes through passive obedience. Nuremberg became the moral antidote to that banality, demonstrating that legality without conscience is tyranny, and conscience without courage is complicity.
The executions of Jodl and Keitel were not acts of vengeance, but solemn affirmations that law and morality must coexist if civilization is to survive its own power.
History: From obedience to accountability
Historically, the Nazi generals symbolized the culmination of a German military culture rooted in Kadavergehorsam, the doctrine of mechanical obedience. Under the Third Reich, this tradition was corrupted into an ideology of destruction. The generals’ participation in the regime’s policies, whether through action or silence, facilitated crimes on a continental scale.
Wilhelm Keitel, chief of the High Command of the Armed Forces, epitomized this surrender of conscience. Once a professional soldier, he became a servile executor of Hitler’s will, earning the mocking title “Lakeitel,” a play on words meaning both toady and lackey. The tribunal concluded that Keitel had “completely subordinated himself to Hitler, and his servility went beyond the normal bounds of obedience.”
By contrast, a handful of officers such as General Ludwig Beck and Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg resisted, at the cost of their lives. Their moral courage proves that resistance, though perilous, was not impossible. The historical record therefore rejects the generals’ postwar claim that they had no choice. They chose compliance, not resistance; loyalty to the Führer over duty to humanity.
The trials thus reshaped the historical understanding of the Wehrmacht, dismantling the myth of a “clean army” and revealing that its leadership bore responsibility for both aggression and atrocity.
Law and morality in dialogue
The Nuremberg process was both a legal and moral dialogue with history itself. Critics have long debated whether it represented “victors’ justice,” noting that no Allied officers were tried for their wartime actions. Yet, the tribunal’s enduring legitimacy lies not in its symmetry but in its principle. It introduced a universal doctrine: that crimes of such scale are not political acts but offences against all humanity.
Justice Robert H. Jackson, the chief U.S. prosecutor, captured this moral vision in his opening statement at the Nuremberg trials: “That four great nations, flushed with victory and stung with injury, stay the hand of vengeance and voluntarily submit their captive enemies to the judgment of the law is one of the most significant tributes that power has ever paid to reason.”
This fusion of reason and restraint transformed Nuremberg from a punitive exercise into a moral and legal revolution. It established a new order where law would serve humanity rather than power, and where moral responsibility would no longer end at the chain of command.
Legacy: The continuing relevance 80 years on
Eighty years after Nuremberg, its principles remain the foundation of international justice. The trials inspired the creation of later tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda and culminated in the establishment of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 2002.
Three enduring legacies stand out:
1. Legal: The affirmation that individuals, not states, bear ultimate responsibility for war crimes and atrocities.
2. Moral: The insistence that conscience must guide obedience, and that silence in the face of evil is itself a crime.
3. Historical: The transformation of collective memory from denial and amnesia to acknowledgment and accountability.
2. Moral: The insistence that conscience must guide obedience, and that silence in the face of evil is itself a crime.
3. Historical: The transformation of collective memory from denial and amnesia to acknowledgment and accountability.
Nuremberg reminds the modern world that legality without morality breeds tyranny, while morality without enforcement remains powerless. It is the synthesis of both rooted in historical truth that guards civilization against repeating its darkest chapters.
Conclusion
As the world commemorates the 80th anniversary of the Nuremberg trials, we do more than honour the past. We reaffirm a covenant between law, morality and history. The Nazi generals on trial embodied the collapse of moral courage in the face of absolute power. The tribunal’s judgment restored that courage to the law itself.
In the words of the IMT, “Let it not be said that these men were without conscience. They chose to follow a criminal path when moral law offered another.” Eight decades later, this warning endures as a mirror to every generation. Thus, the enduring message of Nuremberg is clear: law must serve humanity, not power; morality must restrain obedience; and history must remember the cost when both fail.
After completing his LLB at the University of East London, Tega Adjara pursued a specialized LLM in international law and the global economy. Currently, he is working for the Alberta government sentencing department.
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