War Crimes Trials: Judiciary Case; Telford Taylor Opening Address

(Munich 529) War Crimes Trials - Subsequent Trial Proceedings, (Judiciary Case), Nuremberg, Germany. Chief Prosecutor, Brig. Gen. Telford Taylor, making the opening address to the court. Pan from Gen. Taylor to defendants and their attorneys and judges.

Chief Counsel Telford Taylor:

These men were the embodiment of what passed for justice in the Third Reich. Most of the defendants have served, at various times, as judges, as state prosecutors, and as officials in the Reich Ministry of Justice. They are well accustomed to courts and courtrooms, though their present role may be new to them. But a court is far more than a courtroom. It is a process and a spirit. It is the house of law. The root of the accusation in this case is that these men, leaders of the German judicial system, consciously and deliberately suppressed the law, engaged in an unholy masquerade of tyranny they disguised as justice, and converted the German judicial systems into an engine of despotism, conquest, pillage and slaughter. These men share with all the leaders of the Third Reich - diplomats, generals, party officials, industrialists, and others - responsibility for the holocaust of death and misery which the Third Reich visited on the world and on Germany herself.