British Involvement In War Crimes

Many historians, most notably David Cesarani whose work has been crucial to the understanding of the period directly after the end of World War two, have raised questions over the immediate response of the British government to war criminals. In recent scholarly articles a closer examination of British involvement in war crimes trials has seen a shift in attitudes from those that saw Britain and the war time Prime Minister as actively partaking in the trial and execution of Nazi war criminals towards a view that the interest in the Holocaust in the 1960’s was sparked by British failure in 1945.

There are perhaps a vast number of reasons that explain the British response to war criminals from 1940 to 1950. Involvement in the Belsen Trial and
The statement stated
‘let those who have hitherto not imbrued their hands with innocent blood beware lest they join the ranks of the guilty, for most assuredly the three Allied powers will pursue them to the uttermost ends of the earth and will deliver them to their accusers in order that justice may be
The London Charter in 1945 saw the Allies again meet to decide the proceedings for the subsequent war crimes trials including the hastily approaching British trial at Belsen and the Nuremberg Trial in November of 1945. The charter laid out the three categories of crimes that individuals could be tried for; Crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity. As Justice Lawrence, the British representative at the Nuremberg Trial, saw it, the charter ‘laid down that aggressive war was a crime, that breaches of the law were crimes and that crimes against humanity committed in connection with an aggressive war was a crime.’ The three categories of crime and the agreement on the proceedings of such trials aimed to correct the mistakes of trials in World War One, where the trials were handed over to Germany who acquitted criminals or gave more lenient sentences, and aimed to create a new system for future war crimes trials. The charter however was not brought about without problems. Discussions over the methods and procedures were widely publicised in the press; there was a large debate surrounding the use of the ‘Anglo-American’ legal system or the ‘continental’ procedures. In The Times, the day after the Allied Declaration in London on the 8th August 1945, on page eight, the respondent raises the issue of mutual concession; ‘of course one price to pay of such international