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> The Nuremburg and Tokyo war trials were show trials. In addition to Hans Fritzsche, Franz von Papen, and Hjalmar Schacht in Nuremberg, over 1,000 Japanese defendants were acquitted of war crimes in the trials in the Far East. That seems a pretty staggering number of acquittals for "show trials," if you're using "show trial" in its normal sense, where a guilty verdict is a foregone conclusion. If you just mean it would have been unlikely for Göring to mount a satisfactory defense, when he conspired to confiscate Jewish property after Kristallnacht and allowed the attempted extermination of the Hungarian Jews, you'd be right. But that has more to do with the nature of his involvement. Consider the higher ranking Dönitz, effectively head of state. His defense actually worked fairly well, and he thus received a lighter sentence. (On charges that he sunk neutral vessels, his defense countered that the US had done the same, and he received no additional jail time for it. On charges that he waged unrestricted warfare against British merchants, he received a "not guilty" as his defense argued that they all supported the war effort, etc. He claimed that he didn't know anything about the policy in the camps, he was just a naval man. He received a 10 year sentence - that's lighter than some murderers get.) |