Arthur R. Butz – The Hoax Of The Twentieth Century

Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
for two years before being commissioned in the army
Yes, but what does that have to do with it”
Taylor steadfastly refused to express an opinion of the legality of his action but
“off the record indicated he was as pleased with himself as a field officer
[…] which he never was […] who had just scored against the enemy by a trick
outside the rules of warfare as prescribed by the 1907 Geneva convention.”
The quote is from Hal Foust’s story about the Taylor press conference. Foust
claimed that this was the second instance of Army interference with his messages
to his newspaper, and that in the first instance he had been picked up by Army
agents for interrogation after his story had been sent.
Who was in Charge
In our examination of the Nuremberg trials, we are naturally interested in who
supervised the NMT proceedings. Pro forma, Taylor supervised almost everything
except the appointments of the judges, since the Chief of Counsel’s formal
responsibilities were not confined to the mere prosecution of cases. His Office
was also charged with determining who should and who should not be tried (there
was no separate proceeding for formulating indictments, such as a grand jury),
what the former were to be charged with, and how the latter were to be disposed
of. The Office also took over the functions of the Nuremberg staff and hence one
may assume that the Office took over, at least formally, the (expanded) Nuremberg
staff itself. Thus, the Office was responsible for interrogations, field work
examination of documents, court reporting, and translating and interpreting. 45
We have given reasons why one should expect that this Nuremberg staff had
been under the effective supervision of the War Crimes Branch, and it will shortly
be seen that, whatever Taylor’s formal powers, his actual functions do not suggest
that he ever took over the Nuremberg staff in any effective sense. The War
Crimes Branch, although quartered in far-off Washington, continues to be involved
in our consideration of the Nuremberg trials.
On June 12, 1948, the American press carried a story which reported that an
officer of the U.S. Army, Colonel David “Mickey” Marcus, a West Point graduate
operating under the alias “Mickey Stone,” had been killed in action while serving
as supreme commander of the Jewish forces in the Jerusalem sector in the Arab-
Jewish war for the control of Palestine (actually, Marcus had been erroneously
shot by one of his own sentries). The New York Times summarized his career. He
had been Commissioner of Corrections in New York before the war and, as an
Army officer, had helped draft the German and Italian surrender terms. He was a
legal aid at the Potsdam conference (summer of 1945), after which point, if one
judges for the adulatory New York Times article only, his career ended, since we
are told of no other activity of Marcus’ until he turns up with the Haganah in Palestine
in January 1948, visits the U.S. in April, receiving a medal at a ceremony in
the British Embassy in Washington (probably a cover for negotiations on the details
of the final British capitulation), and then returns to Palestine after three
45
Taylor (Apr. 1949), 272-276.
46