If Hitler had been captured

I think he would have fared rather like Goering, who put up his best defense but couldn't deny the massive documents the prosecutors found with his signature on it. The defendants that were acquitted were at worst peripheral Nazis, and IIRC one of them had spent time in a concentration camp during WWII. Hitler was about as guilty as it is possible to get, and would have been sentenced to hang.

No, you defend all monsters the same...

First you 'plan B' someone else (blame another), and you blame your accuser, i.e. 'We only did what the US did to its native-American population...' This is the same defense used for Klaus Barbie...

Then, if that doesn't work, you run with deniability... 'What??? Atrocities were committed????'

The reality is that all war-crimes tribunals collapse into the same thing... The accused know they are going to be found guilty, so they use the forum to make their accusers look like idiots.

I doubt he would have made it to the Nuremburg trials. He would have committed suicide like Himmler did.

The question may be bootless since Hitler (like Himmler, Goebbels and many others) demonstrated his unwillingness to stand trial (as threatened by the United Nations in 1943.)

British-style or American-style insanity defences were not offered at Nuremberg in 1945 and might have been judged unavailable. Hess was prima facie incompetent to defend himself but was still convicted (although not sentenced to death.)

Although many people, including myself, would agree that Hitler indeed was insane, I very much doubt that he would have fit the legal definition. A huge number of people whom I regard as totally bonkers do not fit the legal definition for insanity. That definition requires that the person be incapable of telling the difference between right and wrong. Hitler himself drew sharp distinctions between right and wrong and in that sense I suppose might even be considered a moralizer. The problem is that he based his ideas of right and wrong on principles that the rest of the world found utterly intolerable.

He would have been hanged alongside the other Nazi criminals and it's pretty certain he knew it.

He would have most likely been captured by the Russians, who didn't bother with the Nuremburg trials.

:> lawyer like those at Nuremburg. (some were acquitted) :> But what possible defense would have been presented? :> Insanity defense, perhaps? :> EL

: I doubt he would have made it to the Nuremburg trials. He would have : committed suicide like Himmler did.

I agree that Hitler would have been a good candidate for suicide, after all that's what he ended up doing. But, if somehow caught, I would expect him to try a good offense as opposed to any defense. Recall that his trial and incarceration after the Beer Hall putsch were some of the best things that ever happened to him. He learned valuable lessons, changed his strategy, and wrote his book. I think he might have been narcissistic enough (or in denial enough) to think that a repeat performance might see him once again a great man. Thus, to the extent that the court would tolerate it, I'd expect Hitler wouldn't so much defend his actions (or even deny them) as he would brag about them and be the demagoguge. I can't recall recall the exact words, but recall the speech at his trial 'The godess of eternal history shall tear to tatters the brief of the prosecution and court. Condemn me, a thousand times over, and history will absolve me'. etc. etc. But, keep in mind that any allied tribunal was not likely to be as lenient and passive as the court that tried Hitler after the putsch, which was actually quite sympathetic to Hitlers rightist aims at the time.

The onl.y credible defence he could have presented was probably that the Nuremberg court did not have jurisdiction, and denounced it as a disguise for the revenge of the victors. At that time such an international tribunal was a novelty, and it's basis in international law was precarious. The Nuremberg trials did very much to alter that.

He could possibly have embarked on a defence of tu quoque (you did so yourselves), probably mainly pointing to Russian atrocities.

All this would have been in vain, of course.

Regards

Hans

Probably that he was unfit to stand trial through dementia and Alzheimers, then Head of State immunity, then (like Goering) a defiant defence that he had done nothing wrong.

Yes. The western Allies would have seen to that. And he would have had a trial to himself, too.

Yes. But not anyone very senior.

Hardly. Firstly it would probably not been available to him under international law (the basis of the Tribunal) and secondly, while it was certainly insane to pick a fight with the rest of the world, it doesn't show clinical madness...

Since it would have been the Soviets who captured him, the point is moot. He would not have been given a trial. But if he had, he would have been hanged. As Göring discovered, there is no defence against documentary evidence of

IMHO, there is just no way Hitler would have allowed himself to be captured by the Russians. I personally believe he would have fled west into Allied hands or even tried to escape alltogether.