The Nuremberg principles were created by the victorious powers in World War II, France, Great Britain, the Soviet Union and the United States. 177 Germans were prosecuted – 24 were sentenced to death, 20 were sentenced to life in prison and 108 others to lesser prison sentences while 25 were acquitted.
Because only defendants from the losing side of World War II were prosecuted in the original Nuremberg trials, “tu quoque” (you, too)” could not be avoided. For example, American Admiral Chester Nimitz testified that the United States conducted unrestricted submarine warfare in the Pacific during World War II. That resulted in German Admiral Karl Dönitz not being charged for unrestricted submarine warfare against America and England. Dönitz (Hitler’s successor after he pposedly committed suicide) was sentenced to just 10 years in prison for permitting slave labor in German shipyards and allowing his sailors to kill unarmed captives.
In 1945, America, China, Great Britain and Russia signed the Potsdam Declaration while the war with Japan continued. Russia did not sign until Japan surrendered after the United States dropped the second atomic bomb on Nagasaki. The Potsdam Declaration granted General Douglas MacArthur, as Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers, the authority to implement terms of surrender. The details of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East were annexed to that proclamation and did not differ substantially from the Nuremberg rules. The IMTFE trials resulted in the prosecution of nine senior Japanese political leaders and eighteen military leaders; seven were sentenced too death by hanging, sixteen to life in prison, one to twenty years in prison and one to seven years in prison. No one was acquitted. Local trials followed in Japan as well as in Germany.
The Potsdam Declaration involving cooperation between the West and the Soviet Union failed once the Cold War ramped up.
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