This year is not just the 70th anniversary of the conclusion of WWII( VE Day in May and V J Day in September) but is also the 70th anniversary of the start of the Nuremburg war crimes trials( at least on Nov 20th it will be).

The recent capture of LRA(Lord's Resistance Army) leader Dominic Ongwe by US forces and his likely transferral to the Hague based International Criminal Court to face charges of crimes against humanity/war crimes has prompted me to paint a scene from the ICC's intellectual ancestor- the Nuremburg based tribunal and its lesser known counterpart- in the far East- the Imternational Military Tribunal For The Far East (IMTFE) entitled "Nuremburg Defendants".

With the benefit of seventy years hindsight what have we learned?- well for a start, crimes against humanity and war crimes did not end with the demise of the Third Reich and other Axis powers( during the Korean and Vietnamese conflicts both the West(esp America) and the forces supported by the Soviets and Chinese would commit what we would call war crimes- see Nick Turse's "Kill AnyThing That Moves: The Real American War In Vietnam"Macmillan 2014). Even as they were on trial for their lives( several were executed anyway) both German and Japanese doctors or medical researchers would argue that they were being tried for activities that the victorious allies had themselves engaged in(the Tuskegee syphilis experiments were still going in the US at the time but nobody otuside the medical community knew about them)- the "tu quoque" defence- "I did it, but so did you!" and conservative critics noted the hypocrisy of Soviet judges sitting in judgement of the Nazis aftertheir country was the Reich's erstwhile partner in crime during the period of the Molotov Ribbentrop Pact of 1939( when Stalin and Hitler agreed to divvy up Europe between themselves- pace Poland and the Baltic States).

With the benefit of hindsight, for all the faults and flaws of both Nuremburg and the IMTFE, it provided a legal watershed- without either their would be no precedent for the UN supported International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yuglosvia and Rwanda and ultimately none for the current International Criminal Court.

Anybody think as I do?

Terry