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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) because 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 in two other considerations: Christopher Dodd, in 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 in 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 in the US.
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 in the basement of the home of Christopher Dodd’s sister, Martha. Christopher Dodd began sorting and putting them in 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 in 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 in 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 in 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, has been 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 .(p.10)
The result has been that “[w]e deny the lessons of Nuremberg, of universal rights to justice” (p. 10). Dodd reminds his readers that in using secret military courts, the Bush administration has rejected the opinion of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor in Hamden v. Rumsfeld (2004) that “[a] state of war is not a blank check for a President” (p. 24). Recognizing the problem identified by Christopher Hedges, in his fine book, War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning (New York: Public Affairs, 2002), that war substantively and fundamentally changes a nation, Christopher Dodd insists that “this nation must not tailor its most fundamental principles to the conflict of the moment” (p. 25). This view was a part of the vision that Christopher Dodd sought to impart to the nation when, in January 2007, he announced his presidential candidacy.
The younger Dodd also offers another reason for publication of his father’s letters: unfortunately, the lessons of Nuremberg are being lost as Holocaust denial and expanded support and dissemination of the fraudulent Protocols of the Elders of Zion have been working to eliminate the memory of Nazi destruction of the Jews. In using his father’s letters to help describe the Nuremberg Trial, Christopher Dodd seeks to add substance to the memory of the Holocaust and to the crimes and punishments of its perpetrators. In doing so, he briefly discusses the evidence and the testimony, and presents a small part of his father’s cross-examination of defendants at Nuremberg. Thomas Dodd was an effective prosecutor and clearly displayed that talent at the Trial of Nazi war criminals. In presenting these as editorial comments and in editing and publishing his father’s letters, Christopher Dodd has, indeed, added substance or content to the memory of the Holocaust and its aftermath.
Finally, in spite of Christopher Dodd’s political and ethical objectives in editing his father’s correspondence, he concludes his analysis of his father’s letters with the comment that there was “an achievement” which stood “out above all others” as the letters clearly revealed “the love story that he [Thomas Dodd] wrote . . . to the woman he adored” (p. 62). This reviewer would certainly not wish to debate with Christopher Dodd the question of the comparative importance of human rights, on one hand, and love, on the other.
The collection of Letters from Nuremberg accomplishes Christopher Dodd’s goals of effectively arguing in behalf of human rights, the rights of defendants, and the importance of the rule of law in opposition to the view of the administration of George W. Bush; presenting information regarding the prosecutorial team at the Nuremberg Trial; adding useful content to Holocaust materials; facilitating an understanding of Thomas Dodd’s thinking, in general, and why he eventually embraced anti-communism; and revealing a touching and delightfully appealing love story between Grace and Thomas Dodd and their children. All of this is superimposed on a canvas that reveals the continuing relevance of the principles developed and followed at the Nuremberg Trial which have remained a hope for human rights in our own time and for the future. Senator Christopher Dodd’s insightful collection of Letters from Nuremberg: My Father’s Narrative of a Quest for Justice is recommended without reservation.
Saul Lerner
Department of History and Political Science
Purdue University Calumet |
