Politics, Trials and Errors

An argument against war crime trials by a distinguished member of the war cabinets of Lloyd George and Chamberlain.

Maurice Hankey [1877-1963], 1st Baron Hankey, became Secretary of the War Council in 1914 and Secretary of the War Cabinet in 1916. In the aftermath of World War I, in 1919, Hankey became First Cabinet Secretary. In 1939 Neville Chamberlain appointed him minister without portfolio and included him in his war cabinet.

After World War II he emerged as a leading critic of the German and Japanese war crime trials. In this book (published in 1950) he offers his viewpoint on this and related matters. He takes the position that the Allies encouraged the Axis to take desperate measures to prolong the war, a policy that impeded the peace process. He goes on to argue that the Allies had no legal right to convict German and Japanese leaders of war crimes.

xiv, 150 pp.