Letters from Nuremberg: My Father's Narrative of a Quest for Justice (review)

Abstract

Letters from Nuremberg: My Father's Narrative of a Quest for Justice, by Christopher J. Dodd. New York: Crown Publishers, 2007. 374 pp. $25.00. Senator Christopher J. Dodd's interesting book, Letters from Nuremberg: My Father's Narrative of a Quest for Justice, is a collection of letters from Christopher Dodd's father, Senator Thomas Dodd, to his wife during the period that Dodd was a part of the prosecutorial team at the Nuremberg Trial. The reasons for publication of the book were (1) Christopher Dodd believed that the letters provide much insight into the trial and those prosecuted, (2) they are a charming and affectionate collection of letters from a loving husband and father to his wife, and (3) they provide insight into the present political posture of the United States from the perspective of the legal concepts developed and articulated during the Nuremberg Trial. The significance of the book also lies two other considerations: Christopher Dodd, making his brief, 2007 political bid for the presidency of the United States, enunciated concepts and principles to castigate the administrative policies of President George W. Bush that Thomas Dodd and the prosecutorial team at the Nuremberg Trial employed the 1940s, and the letters reveal the growing suspicion of Thomas Dodd about the motives and activities of the Soviet representatives at the trial and of the Soviet Union. These suspicions would grow and ultimately turn the senior Dodd into a strong champion of anti-communism the U.S. The story of Letters from Nuremberg is that the collection of Nuremberg letters written by Thomas Dodd to his wife, Grace, had lain unremembered and unread for many years. They were uncovered the basement of the home of Christopher Dodd's sister, Martha. Christopher Dodd began sorting and putting them order during the summer of 1990. Once organized, Dodd began reading his father's letters. One of his discoveries was the very close and mutually supportive relationship between Thomas Dodd and Supreme Court Justice Robert H.Jackson, who had been appointed to serve as Chief of Counsel for the United States during the Nuremberg Trial. Much information the letters describes that relationship, the personality, and the objectives of Jackson as he approached his responsibility at Nuremberg. The letters also showed something of the nature of interaction with defendants, perceptions of the on-going trials of Nazis, consideration of the other prosecutors, including the Russians, and, surprisingly, regular discussions between Thomas Dodd and two particular Nuremberg defendants, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel (found guilty and executed) and Hitler's Reich Vice Chancellor to 1934, Franz von Papen (sentenced to eight years of hard labor). Christopher Dodd insists that, as a result of the principles articulated by his father and others at the Nuremberg Trial and adopted at Nuremberg, two concepts have come to prevail American thinking about fairness administered through the law: By trying those who carried out a criminal war, a complete record of their actions could be shown to the world, and in giving to the defendants a chance to hear the evidence against them and to defend themselves, the Allies would take the legal and moral high ground. Thus, the younger Dodd holds that his father and others set a clear and binding standard of and responsibility for fairness the treatment of the perpetrators of even the most terrible examples of aggression, racism, and crimes against humanity (p. 3). This view, Christopher Dodd insists, was ignored by the administration of George W. Bush: If, for sixty years, a single word, Nuremberg, has best captured America's moral authority and commitment to justice, another word now captures the loss of such authority and commitment: Guantanamo. …