Walter Rockler
Walter Rockler, a prosecutor at Nuremberg, died on March 8th, aged 81
ObituaryMar 21st 2002 edition
WHAT people seemed to find most interesting in Walter Rockler's long career as a lawyer was that he had taken part in the Nuremberg trials. What were the Nazis really like, he would be asked, Hitler, Goering and that lot? Hitler never stood trial, he would patiently remind those whose knowledge of history many years before they were born was a bit fuzzy. Goering stood trial and committed suicide. Ten other defendants were hanged. But, Mr Rockler would add, he never saw Goering and co. Their trials were disposed of in 1946, shortly after the end of the second world war. Mr Rockler arrived in Germany in 1947.
He had answered an advertisement for lawyers to prosecute a second group of defendants, those accused of collaborating in war crimes. During the war Mr Rockler had served as a marine in the Pacific and had learnt Japanese. He suggested that he might be sent to Tokyo to prosecute Japanese war criminals. But the Japanese trials were coming to an end, and Douglas MacArthur, Japan's American overlord, was not keen to prolong the agony. In Germany thousands still awaited the victors' justice. Walter Rockler, a recent graduate of Harvard University's law school, was provided with a German phrase book and dispatched forthwith.
For two years he took part in trials of bankers and industrialists who had had a hand in the systematic murder of millions of people and in the illegal pursuit of war. In 1995, at a conference to mark the 50th anniversary of the start of the trials, he expressed mixed feelings about their value. Was it that Nuremberg law was created ex post-facto to suit the passion and clamour of the time, a view that had been expressed by William Douglas, a member of the Supreme Court? No, it wasn't that exactly. Although some had criticised the trials, they had an important symbolic value. But they had had no substantial impact, Mr Rockler said. "Wars and savagery have not been deterred." There had been frequent violations of the Nuremberg judgment that "no political or economic situation" can justify initiating a war of aggression, and he believed they would continue. Worse, the violators had included the United States, which had taken the lead in setting up the Nuremberg trials.
A visit to Russia
Walter Rockler was not by nature a rebel. After leaving Germany he made tax law his main expertise, practising it in Chicago, New York and latterly for 36 years in Washington. He had a brief break from private practice in the 1970s when Henry Kissinger, then secretary of state, asked him to go to Moscow to examine a Soviet dossier on possible Nazi-sympathisers in the United States. Mr Rockler was more intrigued by the prospect of visiting the Russia from which his parents had emigrated than of talking to the KGB. Nevertheless, on his return to the United States he dutifully accepted the directorship of a new unit set up by the government to find American Nazis. Nothing much came from his Nazi hunt, and he left the unit after two years to resume his tax battles with the Internal Revenue Service.
However, reawakened memories of the Nuremberg trials eventually turned Mr Rockler into a critic of American foreign policy. His concern came to a head with the bombing of Yugoslavia by American aircraft acting for NATO. In May 1999 he sent a letter to the Chicago Tribune, the newspaper of the town where he grew up and where he received his education before going to Harvard. It said in part
The attack on Yugoslavia constitutes the most brazen international aggression since the Nazis attacked Poland to prevent "Polish atrocities" against Germans. The United States has discarded pretensions to international legality and decency, and embarked on a course of raw imperialism run amok...When we, the self-anointed rulers of the planet, issue an ultimatum to another country, it is "surrender or die". To maintain our "credibility", we must crush any semblance of resistance to our dictates to that country.
Strong words. Even so, in a world where millions upon millions of words are published each day, Mr Rockler was surprised by the impact of a letter in a local paper. As it was republished hither and thither he found himself a hero of liberals in America and Europe, a new personality on television, a guest on the campus circuit, always introduced as a former prosecutor at Nuremberg. "Who gave us the authority to run the world?" he demanded of an audience at Princeton University. Bill Clinton had violated the constitution by declaring war, a power entrusted to a "supine Congress, fascinated only by details of sexual misconduct".
Criticism of Mr Rockler was muted. It was difficult to knock an obviously respectable and intelligent man just because he was letting off steam. What he did do was to create a debate about the importance of the Nuremberg judgment. How do you define "a war of aggression"? Could it be in some circumstances a defensive war? Discuss.
The United States is now engaged, under another president, in another war. What would Walter Rockler have said about that? No one knows. For some time Mr Rockler had been battling against lung cancer, and lost.
This article appeared in the Obituary section of the print edition under the headline "Walter Rockler"
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