ABSTRACT
This book is at least as much about the operation of specific geo-political factors within, and upon, the prosecution process within the Nuremberg trials as the trial process itself considered abstractly as an event within legal doctrine. How are we to define geo-political factors? As one of the two opening quotes suggests, geo-politics refers to the relationship between political power, widely defined, and zones of geographical space. Such space can extend, in some cases, beyond formal state borders to the exertion of zones of control and powerful influence over entire continents, such as that exerted
During a wartime military alliance between two major powers (or potential superpowers) against a third major power, it is likely that considerations relating to comparative gains and losses in the future peace, a balance of power during a future post-war territorial ‘carve up’ amongst the military victors, will influence the conduct of the war itself, especially when military victory is almost assured. This was certainly the case with the Alliance against Nazi Germany and Japan between the Anglo-Americans, on the one hand, and the Soviet Union on the other. Indeed, the official policy of ‘unconditional surrender’ was, in part, designed to avoid suspicions that, for example, regional surrenders could be privately agreed with elements of the Nazi regime by, say, the Americans to benefit their specific geo-political interests at the expense of the Soviets, whether as a defensive or offensive measure. The official policy insisted that any surrender must be to the Allies as a whole, and without private negotiations over terms and conditions with any of the Allied powers. Hence, geo-political factors shaped the creation of this Allied policy, not least because it attempted to forestall attempts by the Nazis to break up this Alliance by playing one side against the other, possibly by exploiting fears of a communist dominated Eastern and Central Europe. On the Allied side, there were suspicions that Wolff ’s peace feelers were intended by the Nazi leadership to stir up mistrust between the Anglo-Americans and the Soviets. At this time the Soviets were, for geo-political reasons that Dulles appreciated,4 naturally suspicious. There was the risk that, by allowing such divisions to emerge under the guise of peace contacts, the war itself (and its resulting casualties) could even be prolonged.5
