I have mixed feelings about the Nuremberg trials.
I don't know how I feel about Karl Doenitz being sentenced to 20 years in prison, when a major piece of evidence against him was an order forbidding U-Boats from picking up survivors from sunken Allied ships (which Doenitz issued in retaliation for an American plane bombing a U-Boat on the surface flying a white flag with rescued British seamen onboard). American Admiral Chester Nimitz even testified in Doenitz's defense and admitted he'd issued almost identical orders to his own forces in the Pacific.
But on the other hand, Albert Speer only got sentenced to 20 years when he should have hanged, IMO. I mean, his memoirs Inside the Third Reich are a great read and a great "peek behind the curtain", but morally, Speer deserved to hang as much the others who did, maybe more than some of them.
Consider this: Fritz Sauckel rounded up slave labor and supplied them to Speer, who used them in his factories, where many were worked to death. Sauckel was hanged, and Speer got 20 years. What logic does it make to hang the one who supplied the slaves and spare the one who used them?
My opinion: Sauckel was an ugly, uncouth, grubby little man and Speer was a suave, sophisticated intellectual. One of the judges even commented about Speer, "he doesn't look like a Nazi (whatever that's supposed to mean), he looks like someone we'd play golf with at the country club".
In my opinion, Speer just slick talked his way out of the hangman's noose, aided by the judges' class bias.
