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| III. OPENING STATEMENTS OF THE PROSECUTION AND DEFENSE |
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| A. Opening Statement of the Prosecution¹ |
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GENERAL TELFORD TAYLOR: If it please Your Honors. The prosecution
will observe the injunctions of the Court laid down this morning² and as
to the matter of expedition, it is our estimate that we can put in the
prosecution's case in less than 20 trial days.
Your Honors. This year
is the three hundredth since the end of the Thirty Years’ War, which once
was thought the most destructive in the history of man, and Nuernberg lies
among its battlefields; a few miles from here Gustavus Adolphus and Wallenstein
fought at the “Alte Feste”. These 30 years left much of Germany
devastated, and dislocated its economy for decades. But all that misery was the
merest trifle compared to the havoc recently wrought in six short years,
throughout Europe and the Orient.
The comparison between 1648 and 1948
is not original, and few will openly dispute its cogency. Men at war have
ceased to toy with popguns and have taken to hurling thunderbolts, and
civilization can no longer afford such self-mutilation. It was the acute
awareness of these truths, forced upon us by The First World War, which has led
to the general condemnation of those who wilfully launch a war of conquest as
criminals in the deepest and most serious sense.
These proceedings at
Nuernberg, in which crimes against peace are charged, are vitally important
because the principles to be applied here are man’s best protection
against his own capacity for self-destruction. When we say that aggressive war
is a crime, we mean it to exactly the extent to which we are prepared to treat
it as criminal in a judicial proceeding. No principle deserves to be called
such unless men are willing to stake their conscience on its enforcement.
In this proceeding, we ask the Tribunal to test the conduct of men who
stood at the top of the German profession of arms. In |
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¹ Opening statement is recorded in mimeographed transcript
2/5/1948, pp. 20-152.
² General Taylor refers to the
request of Presiding Judge Young “that each separate functioning branch of
the Tribunal cooperate to the fullest extent possible with all other branches
of the Tribunal to the end that there may be a proper and expeditious
presentation of the case of the prosecution and the defense, to the end that
there may come out of this case the result that should be sought out by all
right-thinking men in any judicial forum: a judgement that on the facts and the
law as nearly as possible approximates justice.”
(Tr. p.
17.) |
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61 |
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