From: jaspar2002us@yahoo.com   
      
   SUPERPOWER DEATH WATCH   
      
   03 11 13 Superpower Death Watch   
      
   WHAT THE SUPERPOWER’S    
   DECLARATION OF WORLD $LAVERY    
   MEANS   
      
      
      
      
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   CERTAIN LESSONS OF VERSAILLES [1]   
      
   BY PROF. A. TRAININ    
      
   Professor [Aron Naumovich] Trainin is a member of the Moscow Academy,   
   Professor of Law at the Moscow University and a leading member of the   
   Extraordinary State Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes which   
   was established by the Soviet    
   Government on November 2nd, 1942.    
      
   His book, *The Criminal Responsibility of the Hitlerites*, appeared in July   
   1944 and expresses not only Professor Trainin's opinion but also the official   
   attitude of the Soviet Government. [2]   
      
      
      
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   Now that the hour of Hitler Germany's utter defeat is drawing near, the   
   question of punishing  the war criminals --the instigators and executors of   
   abominable atrocities-- is more and more assuming practical significance.  The   
   nations demand that these    
   criminals suffer the punishment they deserve.  However, here and there in the   
   foreign press voices are raised advocating leniency toward the war criminals.    
   Essentially speaking, these voices are calling for a repetition of the   
   mistakes of Versailles and    
   for leaving in Germany the dangerous seeds of new wars and new atrocities.    
      
   Yet of all the lessons furnished by the Versailles Peace Treaty, not the least   
   deserving of attention is the instructive history of how the Germans guilty of   
   crimes in 1914-1918 became, *with the connivance of the victors*, their own   
   judges and tried    
   themselves for their own crimes.  The crimes perpetrated by the Germans in the   
   war of 1914-1918 were very considerable.  The investigation commissions which   
   were set up at the time in France, Britain, Belgium and Russia established   
   numerous cases of the    
   slaughter by Germans of unarmed civilians, the destruction of towns and   
   villages.    
      
   When Germany was defeated and the time came to conclude the peace treaty, the   
   Germans' crimes were not forgotten.  A special section of the Versailles   
   Treaty (Seven, "Sanctions") proclaimed the criminal responsibility of Kaiser   
   Wilhelm and his    
   confederates.  Article 227 of the Treaty publicly accused Wilhelm Hohenzollern   
   of grave outrages against international morality and the sanctity of treaties,   
   and declared that a special court would be set up to try him and his   
   confederates.    
      
   Thus the Versailles Treaty bluntly and plainly proclaimed to the world,   
   horror-stricken by four years of war and by the German atrocities, that the   
   guilty would be tried and punished.  But things turned out otherwise.    
      
   The question of trying Wilhelm was decided simply and swiftly, without   
   prolonged diplomatic correspondence.  On January 15, 1919 the Allied powers   
   adressed a note to Holland, to which Wilhelm had fled, demanding the surrender   
   of the ex-Kaiser as a    
   violator of the sacred principles of international morality and law.  Holland   
   refused. The mighty, victorious powers which brought Germany to her knees and   
   and dictated their will to a large part of Europe could not find the means of   
   compelling Holland    
   to submit to the demands of justice and surrender Wilhelm.  *The Germans   
   realized that the victorious powers were not particularly anxious to find   
   those means*.  The upshot was that the trial of Wilhelm, solemnly proclaimed   
   by the Versailles Treaty, went    
   no farther than the pages of that treaty.    
       
   Equally futile proved the efforts to secure the triumph of justice in the case   
   of Wilhelm's confederates who were guilty of war crimes.    
      
   Article 228 of the Versailles Treaty reserved for the Allied powers the right   
   to demand the surrender of Wilhelm's accomplices guilty of violation of the   
   rules and laws of war.  In pursuance of this Article, on February 3, 1920,   
   [labor-faker] Millerand    
   presented a note to the German representative in Paris, Baron Lensner,   
   enumerating the persons who were to be surrendered as war criminals.  In all,   
   the Allied powers demanded 890 persons, including Hindenburg, Ludendorff,   
   Mackensen, Admiral Tirpitz and    
   the former  Reichskanzler Bethmann-Hollweg.    
      
   Baron Lensner refused to transmit this note to the German government and   
   resigned.  In Germany itself an organized movement of protest was started   
   against the surrender of these persons to the Allies.  The German government   
   sent one note and memorandum    
   after another to Paris, asserting that the surrender of the war criminals was    
   "impracticable," and left no stone unturned to prove its assertion.    
      
   The Germany which had disgraced herself with crimes against the laws and   
   customs of warfare, now talked of her "national honor" and "national dignity."   
   "The honor and dignity of the German people" --the German government wrote in   
   the memorandum-- "cannot    
   reconcile itself to the surrender to foreign courts of their countrymen   
   accused of the crimes of war."    
      
   Taking her cue from *the attitude of certain leading circles in the victor   
   countries*, Germany strenuously tried to frighten the authors of the   
   Versailles Treaty with the bogey of political and social complications.  "The   
   German Government" --one of the    
   notes said-- must particularly point out that the demand to surrender the   
   accused will undoubtedly cause the severest disturbances in political and   
   economic spheres."    
      
   Germany's juridical position was absolutely unsound: Germany had not only   
   signed the Versailles Peace Treaty, but by a special national act had endowed   
   it with the force of German internal law. The German Constituent Assembly of   
   July 16, 1919, endorsed    
   and published the Versailles Treaty. But the decision of the question did not   
   lie in judicial argumentation; it was not a doubt as to the legality of the   
   demand to surrender the criminals, but *fear of the danger of political and   
   social upheavals* --a    
   danger deliberately exaggerated by Germany-- that softened the hearts of the   
   victors.    
      
   The German government was not slow to take advantage of the changed situation   
   and proposed a compromise: "The German government declares that it is prepared   
   to institute criminal proceedings in Germany against those persons whose   
   surrender the Allied    
   powers intend to demand."  Germany vowed  that "the prosecution would be    
   conducted with all desirable rigor and impartiality."    
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)