Nuremberg

[Canuck725]

Why did Canada not get to have a judge at the Nuremberg trial, or for that matter, a sector in Berlin and/or germany, while France, who had surrendered, got both??

 

[Michael Dorosh]

Why did Canada not get to have a judge at the Nuremberg trial, or for that matter, a sector in Berlin and/or germany, while France, who had surrendered, got both??

Canada had a Berlin Battalion composed of men from Les Fusiliers Mont-Royal,The  Loyal Edmonton Regiment and The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders of Canada.

How many judges do you think they needed?  The four major powers had two judges each.  Many nations fought against the Germans and did not have judges, to include in no particular order Belgium, The Netherlands, Norway, Finland, Romania, Italy, Australia, New Zealand, Poland, South Africa, Brazil, etc.

Would have been one huge court room if they all had judges (and lawyers).  Trial would still be going on today, most likely, if that were the case.

As for France's surrender, they also to a real degree switched sides and some French troops fought against the Americans in North Africa briefly.  The British weren't so nice either, sinking much of their Mediterranean fleet.  However, French troops fought with the Allies beginning in 1943, in Tunisia, then Italy, and of course the Free French in NW Europe.

The French would be important allies in the post-war world - more important than Canada - to the US and British, holding large tracts of land in North Africa and, of course, a little place called Indochina, where they started fighting communist guerrilas in 1945 or so.

They would also be necessary if war were to break out in Europe, as was considered a possibility, between the Soviet Union and her Eastern European allies and the west.  How much of that was apparent in 1945 or how much it influenced the makeup of the trial, I don't know.

 

[CDNsig]

We had no Nuremberg judges, sector in Germany, or seat on the UN Security Council for political reasons. The Americans and Russians saw any attempt to do this as an attempt to in effect give Great Britain two votes instead of one, since they still viewed us as an appendage of the British Empire. The Russians in particular were opposed, as they realised that Churchill was already suspicious of Communist intentions. As they saw it, France could be more easily influenced, and postwar even looked ripe for a Communist takeover. De Gaulle only prevented this by grabbing the levers of power first. The book "Is Paris Burning?" describes the bitter conflict between Gaullist and Communist resistance forces in some detail. In terms of manpower provided, industrial output, etc, Canada was most certainly more entitled to these positions than France, but Mackenzie King simply rolled over and played dead on the issue. As is usual in Canada, political expediency trumped common sense and national interests... :

 

[Quinn]

We did have a seat at the Tokyo Trial, perahps as a concession for not being in on Nuremburg, perhaps because of the fate of the Canadian defenders of Hong Kong, brutally mistreated as POW's in Japan.