_{Photo courtesy Clancy Sigal}

From Clancy Sigal, a sergeant in the American army of occupation in Germany, on witnessing the Nuremburg trials:

I wanted to look Herman Goering in the eye and shoot him dead.

But inside the courtroom I felt something like relief. Suddenly, it was unthinkable to add one more act of violence to the solemn, businesslike presentation of evidence. Evidence which included the shrunken heads of tortured prisoners and lampshades made of human skin. It moved me beyond tears to a sort of numbness.

The U.S. War Department was determined that Goering and the other Nazis leaders would receive a fair trial. At Nuremberg, there would be no secret evidence or closed proceedings. The Allies believed that would betray their ideal of restoring democracy in Germany.

The Democrat party, cutting and running since 1946. So does this mean the Republicans were against Truman before they were for him? Wingnut history is so hard to follow. The pages are always stuck together for some reason.

In a ruined Germany, where so many corpses still lay buried in the rubble, and life seemed so very fragile, we found it in ourselves to give the worst of men due process.

You can read the whole thing here. Listen to hit here.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 2nd, 2006 at 4:12 pm and is filed under The Good Guys, Torture Policy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.