title: Tyranny on Trial: The Trial of the Major German War Criminals at the End of the World War II at Nuremberg Germany 1945-1946 (Revised Edition)
author: Whitney Harris
description: <DIV>In addition to serving as trial counsel at Nuremberg, WHITNEY R. HARRIS was an officer in the U.S. Navy throughout World War II, professor of law at Southern Methodist University, executive director of the American Bar Association, Solicitor General for Southwestern Bell Telephone Company, and a practicing lawyer in Los Angeles, Dallas, and St. Louis. He and his wife make their home in St. Louis.</div>
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  **Chapter One  
  The Road to Nuremberg**
  
  
  Normally in war, defeat was punishment enough. The losers in war were either
  killed on the battlefield or found themselves in the hands of the victors, who
  could do what they liked with them. Until modern times, there was no clear
  definition of what constituted a war crime and, largely, the victors found it
  expedient to be magnanimous.
  
  
  However, after the wholesale slaughter of the First World War, the victorious
  allies sought to bring enemy war criminals to book. In the Versailles Treaty
  that concluded the war, Kaiser Wilhelm II was publicly arraigned for ‘a
  supreme offence against international morality and the sanctity of treaties’.
  He was to be brought before a special tribunal composed of five judges from
  the US, the UK, France, Italy and Japan.
  
  
  Others who had violated the laws and customs of war were also to be brought
  before tribunals and punished, and the German government was to be obliged