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by sterlind 47 days ago
> The war crime laws were invented as a legal theater for victorious powers to persecute the losers after WW2 with a veneer of legality, for imperialist superpowers to bully the small third countries who refuse to play ball, not for something superpowers to actually abide by themselves

I recommend you watch Judgment at Nuremberg - the 1961 film, not the 2025 one (I've seen both.) the Nuremberg Trials were very much to punish the architects and perpetrators of the Holocaust for their atrocities. you can choose to be cynical, but consider: which "losers" were "persecuted?"

- the Doctors' Trial sentenced the doctors who murdered thousands of disabled Germany's own citizens in the Aktion T4 program.

- the Judges' Trial sentenced the Judges who enforced the Aryan racial purity laws, ordered the castration of "mental defectives" and sent falsely-accused Jews to their deaths.

- the Pohl Trial which sentenced the SS officers who ran the concentration camps and death camps.

sure, the US doesn't have perfectly clean hands, and the victor usually won't prosecute its own the way they prosecute the enemy, but I strongly disagree that the Hague was just an attempt to "persecute the losers." they were prosecuted, not persecuted, and they weren't prosecuted for "losing," they were prosecuted for their atrocities.

just because the Hague is unfair (some men never faced justice, since they were on "our" side) doesn't mean it was unjust (those who were convicted deserved it.)