By 1945, Hitler was not exactly in the best mental health. You know this already, if you have seen one of the infinite Hitler parodies on the net. He exhibited signs of dementia Parkinson's disease (of which dementia is a symptom). His famously sonorous voice had almost disappeared, his hands shook constantly, even simple tasks like writing, reading and eating were a huge task for him. He is no longer the charismatic Führer of the Nuremberg rallies. In a word, he had completely lost his marbles.1
Hitler's trial is the last at Nuremberg. Everyone in the world knows what is going to happen to him. He will be sentenced to death. Even the most optimistic Nazi loyalist cannot deny that. The only question is, how will he go? Will he become a martyr? Will he plead passionately for his ideology? Will he make a final stand like Saddam Hussain did sixty years later?
The greatest criminal of all time must be tried by the greatest court of all time. Only the most respected judges and the most accomplished prosecutors will suffice. Maj. Gen. Iona Nikitchenko, Justice of the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union, Frederick M. Vinson, newly appointed Chief Justice of the US, Viscount Caldecote, Lord Chief Justice of England, and Henri Donnedieu de Vabres, eminent French jurist, are brought in to preside over the trial. Francis Biddle, Attorney-General of the US, formerly a judge at Nuremberg, takes on the role of prosecutor, along with Sir Hartley Shawcross, Attorney-General of the UK, Lt.-Gen. Roman Rudenko, Chief Prosecutor of the Soviet Union, and Auguste Champetier de Ribes, jurist and prominent leader of the Résistance.2 Hitler, in a rare moment of mental clarity, refuses counsel. It is the same brash self-confidence that sent 300,000 Germans to their deaths in Stalingrad.
The trial begins, with live radio coverage being broadcast over the world. Millions of Germans, Nazis or not, tune in to listen to trial of the man that held absolute power over them for twelve years. The charges are read out, and for the first time, the enormity of this man's crimes are officially announced. Here is a man who was responsible for the death of tens of millions of people. Here is the man who drove uncountable masses of people, Jews, Germans, Russians, Englishmen, Americans, Frenchmen, all to their deaths. A man who not only wilfully broke every single humanitarian convention in the world, but reached new depths of depravity, of inhumanity. A man who brought the world closer to hell t
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