Chapter 3 — The Aftermath of War: Trying Its CriminalsJames B. Donovan at the Nuremberg Trials

Chapter 3 — The Aftermath of War: Trying Its Criminals

James B. Donovan at the Nuremberg Trials

After the Second World War ended, James B. Donovan did not simply return to an ordinary legal career. The war had left behind an enormous question:

What should be done with the leaders responsible for Nazi Germany's crimes?

The answer became one of the most important experiments in international criminal justice: the Nuremberg Trials.

Donovan became part of the American prosecution team. Harvard Law School records identify him as an assistant prosecutor, with responsibility that included helping produce visual evidence of Nazi crimes. 

This chapter was crucial because it transformed Donovan from a wartime lawyer into a lawyer who had confronted international crime, political power and the limits of justice.

---

1. Europe After the War

In 1945, Nazi Germany had been defeated.

But victory did not mean that Europe's problems had disappeared.

Cities had been destroyed. Millions had been killed. Concentration camps had exposed the horrifying consequences of Nazi racial ideology and state-sponsored violence.

The Allied powers now faced a difficult question:

> Could the leaders of a defeated government be personally held criminally responsible for what their state had done?

This was a revolutionary legal question.

Normally, war was considered something conducted by states.

Nuremberg attempted to establish that individual leaders could also be prosecuted for international crimes.

The International Military Tribunal was established by the four major Allied powers: the United States, Britain, France and the Soviet Union. 

---

2. Nuremberg Was Not an Ordinary Trial

The principal trial began on 20 November 1945.

The defendants included some of the most powerful surviving figures of the Nazi regime—people such as Hermann Göring, Rudolf Hess, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Wilhelm Keitel, Alfred Rosenberg and Albert Speer. 

They were accused under four major categories:

1. Conspiracy / common plan

2. Crimes against peace

3. War crimes

4. Crimes against humanity

The indictment formally accused the Nazi leaders of these offences. 

This meant the prosecution had to do something extraordinarily difficult:

connect political decisions at the highest level with concrete criminal acts.

---

3. Robert H. Jackson and the American Prosecution

The American prosecution was led by Robert H. Jackson, a U.S. Supreme Court Justice.

Jackson understood that Nuremberg was bigger than simply obtaining convictions.

The trial was also creating a historical record.

His famous philosophy was essentially that the evidence presented against the defendants would eventually become evidence by which history judged the trial itself. 

Donovan worked within this extraordinary legal environment.

For him, the courtroom was no longer simply about winning an argument.

It was about establishing a documented record of what had happened.

---

4. Donovan's Special Assignment: Visual Evidence

One of Donovan's important responsibilities involved visual evidence.

This was especially powerful because the Nazi regime had generated enormous quantities of photographs and films.

The prosecutors could therefore use material created by the Nazis themselves to demonstrate the nature of the regime.

Donovan was involved in the production of two major films:

The Nazi Plan

This film incorporated captured German newsreel and propaganda footage.

Nazi Concentration Camps

This documented the atrocities discovered in concentration camps.

Harvard describes Donovan's work as including the production of these films as evidence against Nazi war criminals. 

---

5. When Propaganda Became Evidence

There is an extraordinary irony here.

The Nazi regime had used propaganda to glorify itself.

After the war, some of that same material was turned into evidence against the regime.

The logic was powerful:

“This is not merely what the Allies claim happened. Here is the regime's own record.”

Captured speeches, films, documents and photographs could be assembled into a coherent evidentiary narrative.

For Donovan, this was an important lesson in the power of documentation.

---

6. The Courtroom Meets the Holocaust

The film Nazi Concentration Camps presented the tribunal with visual evidence of concentration-camp atrocities.

This changed the psychological atmosphere of the proceedings.

A written accusation could be challenged.

A political speech could be dismissed as rhetoric.

But photographs and film showing the physical consequences of Nazi policies confronted the court with something far more immediate.

The prosecution was attempting to transform memory into evidence.

---

7. Why Evidence Mattered So Much

Donovan's legal background became extremely valuable.

The prosecution could not simply say:

> “The Nazis committed terrible crimes.”

It had to establish:

Who did what?

When did they do it?

What documents prove it?

Who gave the orders?

What was the relationship between policy and execution?

This was the essence of legal reasoning.

Emotion alone could not produce a legitimate verdict.

The evidence had to establish responsibility.

---

8. The Problem of “I Was Only Following Orders”

One of the most important legal issues surrounding the trials was the argument that individuals were merely obeying orders.

Nuremberg confronted a profound question:

> Can a person escape responsibility simply because a superior ordered the crime?

The proceedings helped establish the principle that following orders does not automatically eliminate individual responsibility for international crimes.

That principle became enormously influential in later discussions of international criminal law.

---

9. The Trial Was Also About History

Nuremberg had two simultaneous purposes.

Purpose One — Justice

Those responsible for extraordinary crimes had to be judged.

Purpose Two — Historical record

The world needed a permanent documentary record of what had happened.

Harvard's Nuremberg archive describes the trials as important not only for prosecuting Nazi crimes but also for establishing legal precedents and a historical record. 

Donovan's work with documents and visual evidence fitted perfectly into this second objective.

---

10. Donovan's View of Power Changed

Before Nuremberg, Donovan had already experienced war and intelligence.

But Nuremberg gave him something different.

He saw what happened when political authority became almost unlimited.

A government could control:

police,

courts,

media,

military forces,

bureaucracy,

education,

propaganda,

and intelligence.

Once these institutions were subordinated to an extremist political ideology, enormous destruction became possible.

For a lawyer, this was an unforgettable lesson.

---

11. The Psychology of the Defendants

Nuremberg also exposed Donovan to another side of political power: denial.

Many defendants attempted to distance themselves from responsibility.

The courtroom therefore became a psychological contest.

The prosecution attempted to construct a chain:

decision → command → implementation → consequence.

The defence attempted to break that chain.

This experience would later help Donovan enormously when dealing with people who denied responsibility or attempted to shift blame during international negotiations.

---

12. Nuremberg and the Birth of a Negotiator

This is where Donovan's career becomes particularly interesting.

He was learning that conflicts are rarely solved simply by force.

Sometimes they are solved by:

evidence,

patience,

legal reasoning,

communication,

credibility,

psychological insight,

and understanding what the other side actually wants.

These qualities would later become the foundation of his work with Rudolf Abel and the Soviet Union.

---

13. The Verdicts

The International Military Tribunal eventually delivered its judgment on 30 September and 1 October 1946.

Several defendants received death sentences, while others received imprisonment or were acquitted. The tribunal also ruled on the criminal character of organisations such as the SS and Gestapo, while finding some other organisations not criminal as entities. 

The outcome established a landmark precedent:

political and military leaders could be held individually accountable for international crimes.

---

14. What Donovan Took Away From Nuremberg

For Donovan, Nuremberg was more than an assignment.

It became an intellectual education in the nature of power.

He had now seen:

War

How governments fight.

Intelligence

How governments collect information.

Propaganda

How governments manipulate perception.

Law

How governments can be held accountable.

Negotiation

How opposing interests can sometimes be reconciled.

These five elements would eventually converge in the extraordinary career that followed.

---

15. The Turning Point

After Nuremberg, Donovan could have remained permanently associated with government work.

Instead, he returned to private legal practice in 1946.

The contents of Philip J. Bigger's biography place this transition in the next chapter, “Private Practice, 1946–1957,” beginning on page 60. 

And this is where the story takes an unexpected turn.

The man who had just participated in one of history's most important war-crimes trials was about to become an ordinary New York lawyer again.

At least, that is how it initially appeared.

Because several years later, an extraordinary case would arrive at his office.

The defendant would be a Soviet intelligence officer.

His name:

Colonel Rudolf Abel.

And Donovan would soon discover that defending Abel would put him directly in the middle of the Cold War espionage conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union.

---

Chapter 3 — Key Takeaways

Nuremberg taught Donovan five things:

> 1. Power without accountability can become catastrophic.

2. Evidence can be more powerful than rhetoric.

3. Law can cross national boundaries.

4. Psychology is central to conflict.

5. Even enemies must sometimes communicate.

These lessons would become extremely important in the next stage of his life.

Next: Chapter 4 — Private Practice, 1946–1957

**Donovan returns to New York, builds his law career, enters public affairs, and eventually receives the case that will change his life: the defence of Soviet spy Rudolf Abel.**