>> From WXXI News.

This is Connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

Our connection this hour was made in Nuremberg, Germany, 1945.

For years, Nuremberg had been the home to a number of Nazi spectacles, rallies, demonstrations and speeches, and then during World War II, much of Nuremberg was destroyed.

So when the international community was looking for a location to hold an unprecedented trial of surviving Nazi leaders, Nuremberg seemed like the right symbol.

They would hold the trial in the Palace of Justice, one of the few buildings intact enough for such a proceeding to prosecute the Nazi leaders.

The United States turned to Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson.

Jackson was once considered by FDR to be such a natural leader that Jackson could have been president.

Justice Jackson would help lead a team of international prosecutors to make the case that the Nazi leadership had committed crimes against humanity and established new legal categories for considering international acts of aggression.

With the world watching, the trial started 80 years ago yesterday.

Justice Jackson delivered an opening statement that is still often quoted today, and I want to play part of his opening statement in prosecuting the Nazis.

Now.

>> The privilege of opening the first trial in history for crimes against the peace of the world imposes a grave responsibility.

The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant and so devastating that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored because it cannot survive their being repeated.

>> Justice Jackson made clear that while the crimes being considered were essentially new terms, crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, he felt that it was justified to do so.

Here's how the BBC put it.

The Americans were adamant these crimes had to be laid out in detail in open court.

And what's more, the allies had a duty to demonstrate the values for which they had just fought a six year war.

If the courtroom turned into a propaganda battle and Nazi leader Hermann Goering would certainly give it his best shot, then so be it.

Justice, genuine democratic justice must be done.

But what do you charge them with?

And is it fair to charge them with crimes which were not even on the statute book at the time they were committed?

What lawyers like to call ex post facto as Robert H. Jackson, chief U.S.

prosecutor, put it, let's not be derailed by legal hair splitters, murder, torture, enslavement.

These are crimes recognized by all civilized peoples since the time of Cain.

Today, 80 years later, the work at Nuremberg endures for its establishment of international law and standards, and the new movie Nuremberg explores the story and particularly the legal showdown with Nazi leader Goering.

And for those of us in Rochester and western New York, a little history that might not be familiar to you.

Justice Jackson was from Jamestown, New York.

Jamestown is the home of the Robert H. Jackson Center, which seeks to promote liberty under the law, and we're going to be joined by the leadership of the center.

And let me welcome some of those leaders.

Now, the president of the Robert H. Jackson Center is Kristen McMahon, who is joining us now.

Kristen, thank you for making time for the program.

>> Happy to be here.

Evan.

>> And I want to welcome a second guest who we're going to make him stay for just a little while.

He was pitching in just in case Kristen was going to be coming out late from an event.

Rolland Kidder is the former executive director of the Robert H. Jackson Center, and I know the man can tell a story because he happens to be my Uncle Raleigh.

Welcome to the show.

Thanks for being with us.

>> Hey.

You're welcome.

Nice to be here.

>> Well, so I'm going to ask both of you right off the bat here, American Civic Education.

Kristen, I'll start with you.

Maybe it's not at the level we all would like it to be.

Robert Jackson is a towering American figure.

How many people, even from your part of western New York, know of his roots in Jamestown?

And in our region?

>> You know, it certainly our goal as the Jackson Center that nobody gets to leave Western New York without knowing the name and the face of Robert H. Jackson.

He's actually required to be taught in New York State.

And that's something that the center worked on very early in its history.

school students, adults, the community at large come to events at the Jackson Center here.

We have a very robust slate of programs.

And so I like to think that if you are certainly a Western New Yorker, you are more than familiar with his name and certainly appreciate his achievements.

>> the center now, still doing a lot of work, and in particular with the anniversary yesterday.

Kristen, how important is is this moment to look back and think about Nuremberg and maybe leverage what the center is doing to try to reach the public?

>> You know, the there's that, you know, tried and true phrase that those who do not learn their history are doomed to repeat it.

And that's a lot of the work that we do with our school education as well as our public programs, is to ensure a consistent voice in those those events, whether it be his Supreme Court career or his time at Nuremberg, to help educate us to give each generation a new way to answer and ask their questions, and to ensure that that education opportunities continue.

because it is important, you know, with each generation that passes, we lose those direct Connections with that history.

And this gives us the opportunity to explore and really learn those lessons for ourselves.

>> Yeah.

Raleigh, you do a lot of writing and a lot of thinking about the lessons of history, and I'm thinking about the words of Justice Jackson that we just heard there.

He said there was a great responsibility in prosecuting that trial because the world could not tolerate a repeat of what the world had witnessed with the Nazis.

And yet, here we are.

I can't ask you to speak for Justice Jackson.

I never would do that.

But, Raleigh, I wonder what you think in this strange moment, with the kind of effort of.

And it's almost Nazi rehabilitation.

Hitler rehabilitation going on.

Does that surprise or concern you?

>> Well, I think there's always a bad side to humanity, to be honest with you.

And and I think Jackson knew that, and I think he knew that probably what was going on at Nuremberg at the end of the Second World War was not going to end war.

But he he did want to have a process in place.

And it was the first time it was done to have a at least a legal proceeding on it.

And you know, there's a quotation on the flagpole base, the Jackson Center, which basically says that if we can root out a menace, thinking that all wars are legal, at last we will have a line.

The forces of law in the sight of peace.

And I think it was that kind of thinking that drove Jackson to accept Truman's appointment and to go to Nuremberg and it, of course, was a huge thing and probably be the biggest thing in his legacy.

>> we're going to talk this hour about some of the lessons of Nuremberg, and some of them are on display in this new film, in which Russell Crowe stars as the Nazi leader and Michael Shannon plays Jackson.

Rami Malek is in the movie, and we'll talk about, you know, some of what may be historically on the money and some might be a little Hollywood, but the larger themes certainly are there that we should be considering.

I do wonder Kristan McMahon, you know, again, you can't speak for Jackson, but I can't believe that he would have thought post Nuremberg, we'd be sitting here 80 years later with a kind of rehabilitation effort underway for for Nazi ideas.

>> He was very aware of this part, this part, this possibility.

I think there's a there's a line in his opening statement that says something along the lines of what makes this inquest significant is that these prisoners represent sinister influences that were lurk in the world well after their bodies have returned to dust.

And so he knew that that tendency, those those challenges, as you say, that are having a resurgence today, were were things that were going to linger.

It is an unfortunate part of human nature to that, that side, that dark side of of humanity.

And that was one of his justifications for this tribunal was to ensure that the world could see that these particular Nazi defendants were dealt with unambiguously, that they were dealt with decisively in the hopes that it could curtail future events like this.

>> I don't think it should be lost on us.

How extraordinary it was of the decision to have trials at all here.

I mean, Hitler was dead.

Goebbels was dead, but some of the other Nazi leadership survived.

and, you know, we mentioned Hermann Goering, among them.

And I think the modern the 2025 mindset would say like, well, the Nazis, you don't have to have a trial here.

You just witnessed everything.

But I want to listen to one other piece of sound that I think is really instructive here.

This is Jackson.

As part of his opening statements, explaining essentially, why do a trial at all and what the possible value would be.

>> That for great nations, flushed with victory and stung with injury, stay the hand of vengeance and voluntarily submit their captive enemies to the judgment of the law is one of the most significant tributes that power has ever paid to reason.

>> This tribunal, while it is novel and experimental, is not the product of abstract speculation, nor is it created to vindicate legalistic theories.

This inquest represents the practical effort of four of the most mighty of nations, with the support of 15 more to utilize international law.

>> They didn't have to do that.

I mean, I, I suppose there were a lot of other things that was unprecedented.

So let me start with you, Rolland Kidder.

When you think about Jackson's words there in the decision to undertake that trial at all, I mean, there was the possibility that they could lose.

And it was it was a very tense set of months.

We're going to talk coming up here about, you know, the cross-examination of Nazi leadership and the ways that Jackson occasionally felt a little rattled and confessed privately to his colleagues that he felt he was up against masterful liars.

It was a risk, I think, to do this at all, wasn't it really?

>> I think it was.

And I give Jackson a lot of kudos for his courage in standing up and saying, we're going to have this trial.

I don't know as many people in Western New York are, remember the name William J. Donovan, but there was a state office building named after him in Buffalo, and people there, I'm sure, still know about him, but he was the head of the Office of Strategic Services in the Second World War.

And Donovan was there in Nuremberg initially, and I think there were people like Donovan who said, let's just take the the worst 20 bad actors and execute them and get this thing over with kind of thing.

And Jackson said, no, we're going to have we're going to enter all this evidence and we're going to make a case for it.

And I think a lot of people who are out there today who have involved in Holocaust education and so forth revered Jackson because a lot of evidence was preserved because of this trial.

I mean, it went on for 11 or 12 months, almost.

I mean, in in all kinds of evidence, including film evidence and everything else was entered into the record at Nuremberg.

So it's incontrovertible, really, what the evidence was.

It was presented.

And I think that standing up for the process, you might say, of a criminal proceeding and doing it as much as you could in a Western form of justice you know, I think it was it was worth the fight.

And that's one of the things that Jackson will always be revered for.

>> Kristen, did you view this as a risk for Jackson and the others to undertake this trial?

>> I do, Jackson once described this as one of the hardest things he ever had to do, because not only did he have to convince people that a trial should happen, but he also had to find the courtroom and then try the case.

And, you know, part of his imagining of this process was to make sure it was very clear to the public that the judges were independent and would make their own decisions on this.

You know, there's some comparison with what would have been justice in the Soviet Union at the time, which were largely show trials.

And so someone would tell the judges, this is what your verdict is going to be.

And that wasn't going to work for Nuremberg.

If it was truly going to act as a deterrent going forward.

And so, yeah, so I think the stress of it for Jackson was was a factor.

In fact, after President Truman asked him initially or sent some emissaries to ask him if he would be willing to do this, he really did talk about the stress that this would bring and whether or not that might shorten his life.

And that was part of his consideration.

and so he did think that this was because it was a real trial.

There was every possibility that they might not be successful in their endeavor.

>> Yeah.

Kristen Torelli's point.

you know, part of of the risk here in these 11, 12 months of trial is you're going to present a lot of different evidence.

But of course, the propagandists on the other side are going to lie.

They're going to try to deceive the court.

And that is exactly what happened.

There were images and video.

my understanding is there were all kinds of images showed of murdered Jews.

Really, really very difficult, grisly scenes to see.

And some of the Nazi defendants would not even look at the images.

I don't I don't think that is true.

From what I read of Hermann Goering.

But when Goering gets on the stand, he basically says, look, that was the SS.

We didn't even know they were doing that.

And some of this is the first we're seeing of it now.

Again, to us, that's impossible to believe.

And that contradicts so much of the record.

But you are rolling the dice that a master propagandist is not going to be successful in, in convincing the court.

I mean, it was almost the first form of Holocaust denial, I think.

What do you think?

>> Yeah, it's so it's an interesting maybe quirk in the system is probably the best way to think of it, that in the continental system in Europe, one of the tenets is that it's important to hear from the defendants, even if they might lie.

And obviously, in the American justice system, we don't recognize that we defendants speak in very controlled circumstances.

And perjury is one of the things that the American system is actively guarding against.

And so there, Jackson, you alluded to this a little bit in the in the movie and in the conversation with Goering.

Jackson was very frustrated by Goering initially because of his, his, his taking every opportunity to pontificate, to explain away these things, which Jackson wasn't used to from the American process.

you know, the press actually described this trial as exceptionally boring.

they were really hoping for those sensational stories from from the victims and from the survivors.

And to your earlier point, Jackson and his colleagues from Great Britain and France and the Soviet Union were trying to create an unimpeachable record for this.

And so it was a very document heavy trial.

It was a lot of validating a document, walking through what the document actually said, and then having that stand as the record.

So it was very procedural.

It was very heavy, fact driven.

But you weren't getting those, you know headline stories out of it in terms of this shocking in from Nuremberg.

>> Well, and, you know, I'm looking at so the way some of the journalists describe not just as a trial that got boring, but also journalists described Goering as, quote, the last of the Nazis who still believes and part of why they describe that is because, I mean, he was this sort of foreboding figure.

So, Raleigh, you know, in your work as executive director and, you know, I mean, Kristen's doing the work now, of course.

And you're not trying to do hagiography.

You're trying to do history.

So one of the the kinds of analysis that I hear, Raleigh, is that Jackson was masterful at opening, masterful at close, a little bit rattled during the cross, but had a great team around him.

How did you see his performance on the whole there in those 11, 12 months?

>> Raleigh well, he's not a perfect human being as anyone is, and we had, of course, when I was at the Jackson Center 20 years ago, I was the executive director, which Kristen is doing now.

There were still quite a few survivors of the trial.

And so we had people like Whitney Harris here who has had podium timing, and Henry King and others.

And you know, some of some of their stories were strong, some of them weren't so strong.

But I tell you, one that you might be interested in.

How I drove.

Budd Schulberg down here to Jamestown from the Buffalo airport, and he of course, was the guy who produced On the Waterfront and other movies.

It was well known at the time.

And he told me about he got to drinking with a Russian guy.

one night because the Russians were there at the trial, you know, you know, dinner or something.

And he said he was going to.

He wanted to do his film, but Jackson wouldn't allow the film that he had because it had been in the hands of the allies and had been in England, and people would say it had been tainted.

Well, the Russians guy said, well, listen, we got film out in a silo, out in our section out there about 20 miles out of town.

Why don't you come out and get that?

So the next day, Schulberg did in a Jeep with a guy, and that's the film that got introduced.

I mean, there were standards of evidence that had to be met.

They were met crazy things that were happening.

Was it a perfect process?

No, but I think it was as close to justice, probably, as you could get in the at the end of the Second World War.

I mean, it was certainly a step forward.

>> Kristen, how did you view Jackson's overall performance?

>> I mean, overall, I would say I think he did very well.

There were certainly parts.

And that first day of of examination of Goering is one of those where Jackson was asking some open ended questions.

And that really gave Goering the opportunity to speak from the podium in ways that Jackson found both challenging and deleterious to his case.

He adapted, though, I mean, Goering's Goering's cross-examination lasted the better part of several days.

And so it he adapted to that process started asking more yes and no questions, as opposed to giving Goering the room to speak.

and since he was the first to to examine Goering, the other prosecutors from the other countries also learned that lesson in real time as well.

And so they shifted their questions to be more yes and no type questions to avoid that same pitfall that Jackson had experienced.

>> Well, when Goering was questioned about the bombing of Rotterdam or the intentional attack on civilian targets throughout the war, the Nazi leader answered, quote, War is war.

Every nation does what it must do to win, end quote.

And, you know Kristen, maybe more than any other exchange, it seems to me that the very idea of Nuremberg was to address that question, that either war is war and there's no rules, or that even in war, there are internationally accepted lines that cannot be crossed and must be drawn now.

And for the future.

And Goering was essentially arguing for war without rules, wasn't he?

>> He was.

And, you know, and I think history had already shown before then that there were already there were already rules to war.

prior to that.

But if you think about the same time as Nuremberg, you also have the creation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

You have the birth of the United Nations.

And so there really was this wholesale, very holistic effort post World War II to create these mechanisms to enable the countries of the world to communicate with each other, to work out their differences in places other than on the field of battle, and also to give them recourse when those weren't followed.

And so part of the legacy of Nuremberg extends into those very career clear crystallizations of of what is okay and what is not okay in war.

And that leads us into the International Criminal Court today.

>> Rolland Kidder you served in Vietnam, wrote a book about your service and returning, and you understand what it is like to be in combat situations and still try to think through where the lines are.

And I just want to give you some space to talk a little bit about this idea that Goering was challenging, whether it was Jackson or others who were cross-examining him, that, listen, in a war, there are no rules.

You do what you can to win, and you pick up the pieces afterwards.

And the world was saying, no.

So as someone who then served in a subsequent war, how important are there?

How important is it that there are lines that everyone recognizes?

>> Well, I don't I think it was true in World War II as well as Vietnam.

But for example we were trained and, and were told and ordered to keep civilians out of the out of the picture as much as possible.

And in my fighting in Vietnam, for example most of it was at night and we had a curfew and we told the civilians we were fighting in areas where there were civilians to keep out of the way, and they did.

And when the fire started, when the shooting started at night, it was combatants, primarily.

So, yes.

I mean, there are rules of warfare.

And I think what Jackson just went one step further and said, there's also rules for those who are running the countries that are doing the war.

And that's what sort of scared, I think a lot of people is.

What do you mean?

We're actually going to blame the people at the top, and the answer is yes, we are.

And by the way, Jackson said, in that opening address, I think that we're asking these defendants, they're going to have to drink from this chalice.

We may have to drink from it ourselves someday.

I mean, he didn't just apply it to them.

It was it was a these were standards that he felt should be applied going forward.

So how much they get applied, what happens in the future?

I mean, we don't know yet, but I mean, at least somebody stood up back there at the end of the Second World War, the most destructive war in human history, and said, hey, stop, we're going to have an accounting.

And I give Jackson a credit for that.

A lot of it.

Of course, it had to be supported by Washington.

It was supported by FDR, and that was passed on to Truman.

but there were others, as I mentioned, who just wanted to get it over with and not have this accounting.

And Jackson stood up and did the right thing.

>> I'm glad Riley brings up this point.

I want to ask Kristen about something related here, then Hoover, I'll take your phone call.

I've got a few emails to share from the audience.

In our second half hour.

We'll talk to Kristen a little bit about how she sees the new movie Nuremberg, and whether that's worth going to see if that's accurate enough.

I mean, it is Hollywood, but Kristen Rowley's point about Jackson and the prosecuting team pointing to the top saying when atrocities are committed, the people at the top are going to be responsible.

And I am not a scholar of Jackson or of Nuremberg or of history at all.

Everything I read indicates that in the subsequent decades, a lot of Americans now look at and say, boy, we are allies with Germany.

They're such important friends.

How have they healed their society and been accountable?

And some of what I read indicates that Jackson and the team pointing at the top and not explicitly blaming the rank and file, meant a lot to average Germans who were trying to kind of make sense of it.

But again, that's not my scholarship.

So I want to know if you want to speak on that point.

>> So this is actually, I think one of the, the, the landmark pieces of Nuremberg is that it was really one of the first time that those who gave the orders were held to the same accountability standards as those who carried out the orders.

I believe it's in Jackson's closing statement where he says something along the lines of, if you cannot hold the people who gave the orders accountable, and you cannot hold the people who carried out the orders accountable, then literally nobody has ever responsible for war.

And that cannot possibly be just.

And so it moves forward with that.

I think that to your point in Germany, they've done an excellent job of educating each subsequent generation.

about World War II, about the Nazis, about how that history manifested itself in an effort to hopefully avoid that ever happening again.

you know, there was actually a film produced, I believe, in 1948, showing the Nuremberg trials, and it was done in German as a way to educate the next generation of Germans on what those trials were, what that justice system was.

And again, all of this is to help them heal and help them to hopefully avoid such things in the future.

>> All right.

Let me grab Hoover in Pittsford on the phone.

Hey, Hoover, thanks for calling.

Go ahead.

>> Oh you're welcome.

Great program again.

Two things real quick.

I did a law program for a semester in West Germany in the mid 70s.

And all of my German fellow students were so apologetic that they didn't come out and say, we're really sorry, but the way they acted and they asked me questions about America's response to the war, you know, 25, 30 years later.

And I tried to be real honest with them, but they were such great kids.

Well, we were all kids then, and we were it was a good time to see how that war affected the next generation.

So that's a good point.

The real reason I called is on Wednesday, the Harvard Law School indicated in their Chronicle that came out Wednesday that the entire Nuremberg transcripts are now available to the public.

And you can there's thousands and thousands of pages.

So you can go on Harvard Law Review or Law Chronicle, and there will be links into the Nuremberg transcripts.

Anybody can go and read it.

You just got to know how to access it.

So I want to get that out there for the listeners.

>> Hoover.

Thank you for the phone call.

Kristan McMahon you want to add to that point there?

>> Yeah.

So the Hoover has been working on this project or sorry, Harvard has been working on this project for about 25 years.

and so, yes, just this week they announced in in time for this very important anniversary that they have finally completed all of that work, digitizing all of that information.

There have been the transcripts themselves have been available in book form, more or less, since the trials had happened.

But this is really the first effort to make them universally available digitally.

And it was a ton of work, I'm sure.

and such.

It's such a wealth of material and information for the average people, for researchers to have all of that accessible.

We at the center actually have all of the documents that were in Jackson's collection at the Library of Congress.

We have all of that digitized and we also have the entirety of the audio of the trial available on our YouTube channel as well.

So unfortunately, that is not translated yet.

So you for some of it, you will have to speak German or French or Russian or use the YouTube translation services to, to get the English version of it.

But having all of those records publicly available only contributes to educating the current and future generations on this, and they can read it for themselves.

So they have that first, that primary source experience.

>> Hoover.

Thank you for the phone call.

Averil writes in to say, Evan, another local connection is Edward Rigney, a Hobart 1931 grad who was on the prosecution team at Nuremberg.

Edward Rigney, working underneath Jackson's team there in prosecuting the Nazis.

So there's another if you're just joining us, we're talking about 80 years since the opening statements was yesterday at Nuremberg.

And the enduring impact of Nuremberg and, frankly, Western New York, local Connections that you might not even really know about.

Justice Jackson was from Jamestown, New York.

The Jackson Center is in Jamestown, and they work on public education and promoting liberty under the law.

So that's the conversation this hour.

Let me grab one more email before our only break.

this is Tim who says, how is the Russian attack on Ukraine?

Not an example of a Nuremberg violation?

I don't know if this is in your purview, Kristan McMahon, but you get it.

that's from Tim.

Go ahead.

>> No, absolutely.

So, honestly, this is one of the biggest conversations that the international community has been having since February.

Three years ago, almost four years ago now when the Russian Federation invaded Ukraine.

It is absolutely seen as part of the legacy of Nuremberg.

In fact, the International Criminal Court has issued indictments for President Putin and one of his ministers for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

With regard to the removal of children from Ukraine into Russia.

And then just this past summer, the Council of Europe decided to help stand up a special tribunal for Ukraine for the crime of aggression.

And so they're in the process of working through the logistics of that.

in terms of who will be the chief prosecutor, how is it going to be funded?

These are all sort of just those basic logistics questions.

But the hope is that that special tribunal will be stood up by early next year and can begin the work that that it needs to do.

On the crime of aggression, specifically.

So there is some oh, sorry.

>> No, no, no.

Go ahead.

Kristen.

Yep.

Finish the point.

>> I was gonna say there's some you know, the International Criminal Court today has three crimes that they have primary jurisdiction over, which is genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

And then the crime of aggression was added later.

And so this will really be one of the first tests of the crime of aggression as added to the Rome Statute in 2010.

So that's one of the reasons why there's a special tribunal being set up for this as well, because the referral mechanism for the crime of aggression needs to go through the Security Council.

If the parties are not signatories to the Rome Statute.

And since the Russian Federation is a permanent member of the Security Council, they are never going to allow a referral to the International Criminal Court for this crime.

>> Rolland Kidder do you want to weigh in on Tim's email as well?

Anything you want to add there?

>> I just like to take this opportunity to say to anybody listening who has not been to Nuremberg, I would certainly urge them to go.

It's a beautifully restored city.

It was totally rebuilt after the Second World War, but it's also it brings back the reality of all this.

The Palace of Justice is still there.

The courtroom where the trial was held is still there.

And there's a documentation center out of the old stadium where Hitler had his rallies, which is a powerful museum of the of the Holocaust, basically.

And in the combination of it is that if you're heading that way, if you're in Europe, you ought to stop by and see all this, because it really has a powerful impact.

>> mm-hmm.

>> when we come back from our break, I've got a few more emails I'll read and then I want to talk to.

Kristan McMahon from the Robert H. Jackson Center in Jamestown Rolland Kidder, the former executive director of the center, we're talking about 80 years since Nuremberg.

And there's a movie called Nuremberg in theaters now.

Russell Crowe plays the Nazi leader who is probably the big fish Nazi on trial and also the most foreboding, who really tangled with Jackson, but also tangled with a number of the people on the prosecutorial team.

So we're going to talk about whether it's you know, a valuable first step in education to go see that movie and maybe what Kristen thinks of that.

So we'll take the short break, come right back on Connections.

I'm Evan Dawson Monday on the next Connections.

In our first hour, doctor Ray Dorsey joins us talking about his new book on Parkinson's disease, the latest in causes, treatment and more.

Then in our second hour, a kind of eulogy for Black Friday, black Friday shopping is still happening in some places next week, but it used to be a big deal.

Long lines in the cold, big box stores buzzing.

We're going to run down all the stores that have closed as we talk modern shopping.

>> A bipartisan group in the House wants to ban members of Congress from trading individual stocks.

They argue lawmakers have access to information that most Americans don't, and that creates an appearance that they are profiting from their jobs.

>> We all know what's going on.

Congress knows what's going on, and it needs to stop.

>> I'm Ailsa Chang.

The fistfight over stock trading on All Things Considered.

From NPR news.

>> This afternoon at four.

>> This is Connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

All right.

Pat emailed to say, Evan, you buried the lead.

What happened at the end of the Nuremberg trials?

we're not trying to do, like, a spoiler alert.

I think 80 years on, I think we should all know that it was a successful prosecution.

And in fact, I think it was the day before, the night before Goering was going to be one of 9 or 10 Nazi leaders hanged.

He committed suicide, I think, with a cyanide pill.

Although I don't know if we know.

Exactly what do we know what happened?

Kristan McMahon there?

>> there are two stories that I've heard on this.

One is that he always had the pill on him, and it was just sort of secreted in a place that that no one had thought to search.

Another story is that one of the guards smuggled it to him.

So I personally don't know whether one or the other is completely accurate, but those are the two stories around that situation that I've heard.

>> What I've also read is that he asked for a firing squad and was denied.

That.

Is that correct?

>> He did.

Yeah.

So he did not think a hanging was a dignified enough death for someone of his stature.

And so he petitioned the court to be shot by firing squad instead.

And the court denied that request.

And so I think it was actually within two hours of his scheduled hanging that he committed suicide.

>> So, Pat, that's the answer.

On what happens immediately after the trial.

But Raleigh as as your colleague Kristan McMahon was talking about the long term impact and the ways that we are still talking about it today.

is it possible to overstate it?

How what's the legacy of Nuremberg in your mind?

Raleigh?

>> Well, I think it's still the standard, probably the gold standard in terms of addressing the issue of war at the top levels.

And at the at the leadership level of government.

And our country is sort of in between, I guess you could say, I think most Americans would agree with that.

But we have not agreed to be a member of this criminal court treaty, fearing that it would I guess, diminish our sovereignty in some way.

it frankly doesn't concern me that much.

I think accountability on something like this is important.

No matter what country you're talking about.

And you know, I think Germany is was a civilized country, as we know it and had great artists and musicians and a good government, or at least a beginnings of a democratic government.

When all this happened.

So I'm glad Nuremberg is there.

And I think it is the gold standard still.

>> Well, the film in theaters now, Kristan McMahon is the president of the center of UC Nuremberg.

The film.

>> I have.

>> Okay, so Russell Crowe plays Goering.

Michael Shannon, I think plays Jackson.

And first of all, just in general, did you enjoy it and did you find it accurate enough for your tastes?

>> I did enjoy it.

I think it is very well acted.

I think that the dramatic licenses that were taken were ones that you would expect Hollywood to take.

So it's actually based on a book by a gentleman named Jack El-hai, who I think the book came out about 10 or 11 years ago, and it's called The Nazi and the psychiatrist.

And so it really focuses on the relationship between Rami Malek's character, Douglas Kelly, who was a psychiatrist at Nuremberg, and Goering and some of the other Nazi defendants.

The book itself doesn't go into the trials at all.

And in fact, Douglas Kelly had left Germany by about January of 1946.

So he actually wasn't present for Goering's examination.

but again, from a from a dramatic license perspective, you understand why James Vanderbilt made the decision he did to have the Douglas Kelly character there for the entirety, and certainly leading up to, to Goering's examination, you know, from the center's perspective, we really hope that it if it is somebody's first introduction to Nuremberg, that it intrigues them enough to learn more.

We're actually bringing Jack El-hai here to Jamestown at the end of January for a special screening of Nuremberg, and then a conversation with Jack afterwards to have some of these conversations about the historical accuracy and adapting his book into this movie.

>> Yeah, I, I always think historical I guess well, it's not I mean, it's based on a true story, but there's license.

And I always want to ask the writers, like, was history not interesting enough that you had to.

And I get it to your point.

If he wasn't there, if he left in January andöring takes the stand in March, does it matter if we fudge that a little?

sure.

I get it.

but I'm also wondering, you know, if this is the only foray that some viewers have of Nuremberg, the story which will probably be the case, does it do enough for them to give them a good understanding?

Because I'm with you, that you always want people to say I'm interested.

Now I'm in a deep dive on my own.

But for the people who don't, does it do damage or is it, you know, sort of passable?

>> Yeah.

I mean, I don't think it does damage you know, personally, I think so the, the Jackson representation, especially with the Goering cross-examination, came across weaker than I actually think it would have been in, in history, in the historic record.

but you know, it is accurate enough.

to give people an understanding of the basics of Nuremberg.

It was it was a trial.

It was one of the first of its kind.

And that these Nazi defendants were held accountable for their actions during World War II.

And when you think about the basics of the Nuremberg trials and what Jackson's hope was for them, I think that covers it.

>> Alex emails to ask, do your guests think the schools are doing enough to make sure students understand the tragedy that led to the Nuremberg trials?

So I'll start with Kristen, and I'll let you answer there.

And I think I've got a follow up related to some of the other things happening this week.

But in general, Alex wants to know, how are schools doing with this?

What do you think?

Kristen?

>> Yeah, so I think I think it's a mixed bag to be honest.

You know, when I think back to my history classes in high school, you know, they basically stopped with the Civil War.

We never really got into even what I would consider modern history.

and so some of that is a function of the test taking the standards that are set by each state.

I think absolutely.

Within most schools there are teachers doing going above and beyond to educate students by creating special classes.

Here in Jamestown, one of our high school teachers has a class on social justice where she does a lot of this type of education.

They come to the center all the time for our programs.

And so within when within each school, I suspect that there is, you know, 1 or 2 teachers who are really doing that above and beyond work to ensure that these lessons survive.

But it is a part of the education system today that the state set so many standards that you're not going to be able to cover the entire breadth of history.

>> Riley, what do you think?

I mean, I again, I'm not in schools every day and it's I don't want to denigrate anything teachers are doing because I know how hard it can be.

But you certainly hope that students are emerging with a pretty good understanding of history and the risk, as Jackson himself said in the opening, of seeing certain major tragedies repeated.

So how do you think schools are doing?

>> Really well?

I think the schools are.

I have grandchildren in schools here in town, and I think things are they're getting a good overview of history.

Of course, I preach to them quite a bit about World War II.

because I was on the committee that built the World War II memorial in Washington on the site, and design Committee, and I think the most critical event in the 20th century was the Second World War for this country and for the world, and hopefully we learn some lessons from it at Nuremberg.

But, I think it also is realistic the further you move away in history from a time when it happened, the less attention gets paid to it.

And that will probably happen for the Second World War.

But, that's one of the reasons we built that memorial on the east west axis in Washington, D.C.. So people can go there and they'll remember.

>> I think that's number one really, really well said.

And then that second point, the longer you go in history, the less you feel like there's even time or attention on something.

And that was the point I made last week on this program when we talked to David Schmidt, one of Ken Burns's colleagues on the New American Revolution series, which is finishing up tonight on PBS, the six part series has been rolling out all week.

An amazing, amazing production, a decade in the making, and some local teachers on this on this program were saying to us that, you know, the the Revolutionary War really was a civil war and it became a world conflict.

But those things are sort of elided in a lot of classes, not because teachers don't want to teach, but because they don't feel like they have a lot of time.

I mean, you know, Kristen, to your point, if you can barely get through the Civil War, the American Civil War you know, and teachers feel like they're racing to, to teach enough material that's going to be on a standardized test.

I don't think it's fair to denigrate them for saying, hey, how thorough of an understanding do you have of the Revolutionary War for your students, or how much detail did you get into on Nazi propaganda and the rise of the Reich, et cetera.?

it's not easy to be a teacher.

I just wish everybody had more time.

And I guess maybe that's where you come in.

Kristen, with the center's mission.

>> Absolutely.

You know, nonprofits like the Jackson Center are here to augment formal education.

So whether that be for students who are in school today or adult people who are curious about perhaps things that they learned about, or perhaps things that they didn't learn about, that's why we do the programs that we do.

So our programs are both dives into history as well as conversations about contemporary relevance.

You know, for some, like organization like the Jackson Center, it's also important for us to help our audiences understand why are we still talking about Robert Jackson today?

What was his place in history?

But more importantly, why is he relevant to our lives in the present?

>> All right, back to your phone calls and emails.

We go, this is John in Rochester next.

Hey, John, go ahead.

>> What was the role of Rochester Zen Center founder Philip Kapleau?

>> Philip Kapleau.

>> Has he chaplain the notion of justice alive?

>> I.

>> I, I don't know, is that a name that you recognize?

Kristan McMahon.

>> Well, he is a.

>> I'm sorry, I didn't hear the name.

>> Go ahead.

>> John Philip Kapleau was a reporter at both war crimes trials in Germany and in Japan.

>> Okay.

Kristen.

Philip Kaplan, is that a name?

You know.

>> That is not a name.

I know, although I'm not familiar with everybody on Jackson's team.

>> Okay.

>> So I'm always curious to learn more.

>> Rolland Kidder.

Was that a name that you recognized?

>> No, but it sounded like it was a reporter.

>> Yeah.

Reporter.

>> covering both.

There were some war crimes trials in the Pacific, although they were not to the extent of Nuremberg.

And they've never had the lasting.

I think, power of Nuremberg, because there wasn't really as much of a formal process.

It didn't it wasn't, it wasn't received.

Well, I guess in the, in MacArthur's world at the end of the Second World War.

But I don't know the name.

You know.

You mentioned.

>> No.

>> Andrew.

Thank you.

John Andrew emails the program saying, Evan, you've covered the rise of Nick Fuentes, a proud neo-Nazi who said that Hitler was cool.

Jackson would probably be rolling over in his grave if he saw that happening.

Now, I think our guest.

I appreciate that, Andrew.

I think our guests have kind of covered the fact that Jackson was aware of the dangers of the repetition of history.

So I don't disagree that it's fair to assume that Justice Jackson would be extremely disturbed to see neo-Nazis in the ranks of sort of American, almost mainstream.

Now but he certainly was aware, Kristan McMahon to Andrew's point there, he was aware that this could happen.

Right.

>> Absolutely.

You know, I think I think first and foremost, he would be exceptionally disappointed that the record he was hoping to establish at Nuremberg is being questioned as to with Holocaust deniers and things like that, because that was one of the reasons why it was such a document heavy trial.

you know, he he recognized that within society for all of humanity, if you go all the way back to the biblical stories of Cain and Abel, that there there have always been dark forces within our humanity.

And that part of the again, the reason for this trial was to be able to create an accountability mechanism and a way to deal with that going forward.

I think he would be quite pleased with the fact that the International Criminal Court came into being, you know, as as with any legal system, it's not perfect.

And there are certainly a lot of questions about it now and a lot of pressures on it.

so, you know, that adaptability, hopefully that it will have to, to address what circumstances today require it to address Raleigh?

>> I'm, you know, in response to Andrew's email I will say I appreciate the point that you and Kristen have made about how valuable Nuremberg was simply as a historical record.

That is undeniable.

There were stories of American generals after the war wanting to document for themselves the concentration camps that they were seeing up close, literally saying, I'm doing this so people understand that this was real and you've got people to Andrew's email, the Emailers point, like Nick Fuentes, who are making jokes about how long it takes to bake a batch of cookies in reference to how long it would take to kill that many people in the way that the Jews were killed by the Nazis, and then doubting that the numbers are real.

And I find that not only absolutely obviously anti-Semitic, bigoted, disturbing in every way, but Raleigh, the documents and the records are there partially because of Jackson and Nuremberg.

Right.

We've got the documents.

>> That's right.

And you've got to remember, I mean, there was probably lawyers listening today.

I happen to be one that never practiced law, which is probably a good idea.

>> But.

>> the truth of the matter is, documentary trials are boring.

And a lot of I think Nuremberg was boring.

it wasn't ineptitude on the behalf of or on the part of Jackson.

It was just that that's he had many lawyers there, took the podium and took on different defendants.

The other thing I would say about the trial at Nuremberg is there were acquittals.

There were people that were sentenced.

Not everybody was hung like everybody thought they would be when they walked into that room.

So there was some justice done.

There was some decisions made.

And, the process itself, yeah, it was flawed, I suppose, but it wasn't just Victor's justice.

It was a step in the right direction.

And I think that's the way we have to look at it.

>> Well, listener writes to say, Evan, listening to your show after a Holocaust survivor social event is mind boggling.

I would suspect that would be but I'm grateful for the audience today.

And as we finish up here, Kristen, about 30s, what do you want people to know about the Jackson Center today?

>> so we spent a lot of time talking about Jackson's relevance today.

And in fact we kicked off this afternoon at noon a worldwide series commemorating the 80th anniversary of Nuremberg.

So we'll be doing one program a month with our partners around the world to help foster these conversations and really to help educate people.

So I would encourage your audience to visit the Jackson Center's website, Robert H. Jackson.

And check out those programs.

They're all virtual so you can participate from anywhere.

>> Kristan McMahon I know you have a busy schedule.

Thank you for working in this conversation today, and thank you for the very important history that you all preserve and share.

>> Thank you so much, Evan.

It's been a pleasure.

>> And Rolland Kidder, former Executive Director of the Robert H. Jackson Center Raleigh.

Great having you as always.

I'll see you soon.

>> I'll see you.

Thanks.

>> That's Rolland Kidder Kristan McMahon wonderful.

Important conversation.

I hope you appreciate what the Jackson Center does.

I hope you've been watching Ken Burns series on the American Revolution, which wraps up tonight.

Big, big week for history here from all of us at Connections.

Thank you for watching.

Thank you for listening.

we are back with you on Monday on member supported public media.

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