rete 3224 Nuremberg trial relevant today By CHARLES DUKES EN MEN found guilty of the most monstrous crimes ever committed were hanged during the night of Oct. 15th, 1946. Their execution brought to an end a year’s pro- ceedings before the four-power International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg which opened a new chapter in international law. For the first time ever states- men were tried and found guilty of crimes against humanity. Al- though Goering, Keitel, Streicher and the others repeatedly claim- ed that they had “acted on or- ders from above” and been “un- aware of the Nazis’s mass-mur- der machine” they were sent to the gallows. Other Hitler-Reich Strategists received long hard labor sentences. For the peoples the back of nazism seemed to have been broken. The contemporary relevance of the Nuremberg Tribunal, its proceedings and findings spring to life in a new GDR play “The Nuremberg Trial” which was premiered towards the end of 1967. Rolf Schneider, the 34- year old author drew extensively on the official 42 volume ac- count of the trial. He showed that the Nuremberg verdict for- bidding a rebirth of fascism in Germany had been rendered null and void by subsequent develop- ments in Western Germany. Witness for example the VIP reception given to Baldur von Schirach and Albert Speer (both given 20 years hard labor in Nuremberg) on their release from prison in 1966. It was even- . tually the West German mass- circulation - illustrated “Stern” which outbid all comers for ex- clusive publication rights of Schirach’s memoires entitled “I believed in Hitler’. Public attention is also focus- ed nowadays on the activities of the vociferous right-wing National Democratic Party (NPD) in West Germany. It is already represented in six state parliaments. The International Herald Tribune, summarizing the party’s Third Congress held in November 1967, wrote on Nov. 13 that “objective observers con- cede that if the 1969 federal election were held today the Na- tional Democrats would probably get between 30 and 50 seats”. Clearly, therefore, it would be a grave mistake to assume that the NPD only represents an in- corrigible “fringe movement’ which in no way endangers de- mocracy in the Federal Repub- lic. Statements by leading Bonn government figures merely echo NPD policy in perhaps a rather more refined form. While NPD Deputy Chairman Welhelm Gut- mann claims “the NPD is the advance guard on the march to German unity”, Ernst Majonica, Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the CDU-CSU Bundestag fraction, declared: “German reunification requires a radical change in the balance of power as it emerged follow- ing World War Two. It is very seldom that the results of a war have been altered subsequently utilizing peaceful means.” West German Defence Minister, Ger- hard Schroeder, speaking in Es- sen in June 1967, urged conven- tional and nuclear armaments for the Bundeswehr. Thus the Statute of the Inter- national Military Tribunal in Nuremberg retains its absolute relevance today. Its Article Six for instance, stipulates: “Crimes against peace, planning, prepar- ing and implementing and ag- gressive war or conflagration violating international agreement constitute a crime to be judged and convicted by the Tribunal.” Professor Wolfgang Heinz,. who directed the GDR stage production “The Nuremberg Trial”, also told an audience dis- cussion after the first night that this play was to be regarded as a stern warning both to the GDR population and above all to the European peoples. “The GDR, which has strictly adhered to the stipulations of the four- power Potsdam Agreement which forbade among others a revival of the nazi ideology in Germany is justified”, the speak- er added, “in sounding the alarm. It is impossible to accept the contention of certain people, particularly some in the West who belittle the role of the West German neo-nazis.” The GDR producer then very appropriately directed his atten- tion to Vietnam. He noted that even in the United States itself “important sections: of public opinion, newspapers, students, political organizations and others were more and more op- posing the U.S. aggression and wanton mass murder of Vietna- mese Civilians.” He recalled that such aggressive actions had been condemned over 20 years earlier by the International War Crime ‘Tribunal in Nuremberg. “Thus,” professor Heinz con- tinued, “added impetus is given by this GDR play to efforts by the Stockholm Tribunal, Lord Bertrand Russell and others to Similarly bring President John- son and his closest accomplices to trial on precisely the same charge—the preparation and im- plementation of wanton aggres- sion!” Kill ratio reduces war to arithmetic TF MORE proof were needed that the American army is carrying out premeditated murder of the population of Viet- nam, it can be found in the ex- pression “kill ratio”, introduced into the language by the Ameri- can command. If you divide the number of dead Vietnamese by by the number of dead Ameri- cans the result is the kill ratio. Needless to say, this ratio was not invented to reveal the evil intentions of the U.S. command to the world public. It is intend- ed for American consumption. The kill ratio reduces the war to simple arithmetic. This is a simplification for which many Americans have been waiting. It permits them to forget what the war is all about. It permits them also to close the mouths of cri- tics who say the war isn’t get- ting anywhere. And it permits ‘them to forget about America’s dead and instead to find satis- faction in the fact that the num- ber of Vietnamese fallen is much ‘greater. Reports in the New York Times, for example, show that the kill ratio has never fall- en lower than three or four to one. What the. kill ratio really shows is that it has become the FEBRUARY 9, 1968 aim of the American army to kill at all costs. If the measure of success is the number of dead, the first thought of the American command after a bat- tle is to count the corpses. American soldiers in Vietnam are not killing to defend Saigon or to take a particular village for the Vietnamese war is not like any other war. Territorial gains are not important. The goal is not to advance the front be- cause there is no front. The point is to kill. Every American officer, when he makes his re- port, gives first and foremost the number of enemy killed divi- ded by his own losses. If the toting up of the dead is the most important thing, then one corpse is as good as another. In Vietnam you can’t tell a par- tisan from an ordinary ‘citizen. Consequently every dead Viet- namese is cause for celebration because he improves the kill ra- tio, no matter who he was or what he wanted. This is the basic inhumanity of U.S. policy. If, in addition, Johnson gives local commanders a free hand this has further con- or otherwise, that partisans have been seen in a certain village, he gives the order to drop bombs and fire missiles. Only then does he drop his airborne troops on the battlefield, and they often find only bodies. The partisans may already be many miles away; on the spot the dead are being counted. Only someone who does not know what the kill ratio is can consider such a bat- tle a victory. Kill ratio is also a justification for using chemical weapons, long-range artillery and aircraft. These weapons do not pick and choose their targets; they des- troy at random. From a height of 8,000 metres a flier cannot distinguish an armed man from a mother and child. The race to improve the kill ratio has rendered it unimpor- tant who is killed; what matters is how many. This fits the men- tality of American bookkeepers and stockholders who are able to see a purpose to the Vietnam war when expressed in these terms. But unfortunately it is also beginning to suit the men- tality of American officers, and : what is worse, part of the 'Ameri- _ can public. By DANIEL MASON President Johnson’s appoint- ment of Clark Clifford to be Secretary of Defense, and his State-of-the-Union message to Congress are a clear signal to the world that he is not inter- ested in negotiations to end the Vietnam war. ; This time, in the midst of so- called searching for “clarifica- tion” of Hanoi’s latest offer, Johnson opened his State-of-the- Union message by attaching conditions to cessation of the bombing of North Vietnam that he knew would be unacceptable to Hanoi. He practically asked for North Vietnam to halt all measures of defense. Not satisfied with that, two days later he appointed Clifford to be his Defense Secretary. Clifford, the most powerful of Johnson’s unofficial advisers and friends, is notorious as the most violent opponent of the 37-day halt in the bombing in 1966 and as the most vigorous civilian ad- vocate of escalation. Clifford, a Washington law- yer, who has never held public office, has been a _behind-the- scenes power in the White House ever since President Tru- man took office in 1945. He was one of the initiators of the cold and hot war, _anti-Soviet and Cau An honorary unit of the West German “Bundeswehr” showing its links with the militarist traditio veterans of Hitler’s troops in World War II. War hawk gets - defense post ns of the past during a parade anti-democratic foreign policy that has kept the world in shock since World War II. He is the top lobbyist for Wall Street monopolists in Washing: ton. He represents General Elec’ tric, Standard Oil of California, Hughes Tool, Phillips Petroleum, duPont, E! Paso Natural Gas and McGhee Oil. Johnson’s appointment of Clif- ford was therefore a clear si to Hanoi and to the world that Washington does not want t0 halt the aggression against Viet- nam. :