Politics, Trials and Errors

Front Cover
The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd., 2002 - History - 168 pages

An argument against war crime trials by a distinguished member of the war cabinets of Lloyd George and Chamberlain.

Maurice Hankey [1877-1963], 1st Baron Hankey, became Secretary of the War Council in 1914 and Secretary of the War Cabinet in 1916. In the aftermath of World War I, in 1919, Hankey became First Cabinet Secretary. In 1939 Neville Chamberlain appointed him minister without portfolio and included him in his war cabinet.

After World War II he emerged as a leading critic of the German and Japanese war crime trials. In this book (published in 1950) he offers his viewpoint on this and related matters. He takes the position that the Allies encouraged the Axis to take desperate measures to prolong the war, a policy that impeded the peace process. He goes on to argue that the Allies had no legal right to convict German and Japanese leaders of war crimes.

xiv, 150 pp.

 

Contents

The Politics of Unconditional Surrender
28
Origin of the FormulaChurchills AttitudeStalins
38
The German Trials
53
Norway
70
The Japanese Trials
80
The Aftermath of Tokyo
111
The Past the Present and the Future
124
111
147

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Page ix - Such violations shall include, but not be limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation to slave labor or for any other purpose of civilian population of or in occupied territory, murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war or persons on the seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity...

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