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The Nuremberg judges, left to right John Parker, Francis Biddle, Alexander Volchkov, Iona Nikitchenko, Geoffrey Lawrence, Norman BirkettMajor-General Iona Timofeevich Nikitchenko (Russian: Иона Тимофеевич Никитченко) ( 1895 - April 22, 1967) was a judge of the Soviet Union.
Nikitchenko presided over some of the most notorious of Stalin's show trials during the purges of 1936 to 1938, where he among other things sentenced Kamenev and Zinoviev.
Nikitchenko was also the Soviet Union's judge at the Nuremberg trials, and was President for the session at BerlinBerlin [ bɛrˈliːn ] is the national capital of Germany and its largest city, with 3,387,404 inhabitants (as of September 2004); down from 4. 5 million before World War II. Berlin is located on the rivers Spree and Havel in the northea. Nikitchenko's prejudices were evident from the outset: before the Tribunal convened, Nikitchenko explained the Soviet perspective of the trials:
- "We are dealing here with the chief war criminals who have already been convicted and whose conviction has been already announced by both the Moscow and Crimea [Yalta] declarations by the heads of the [Allied] governments ... The whole idea is to secure quick and just punishment for the crime." [8. Report of Robert Jackson, United States Representative to the International Conference on Military Trials, London, 1945 (Washington, DC: US State Dept., 1949), pp. 104-106, 303.; Whitney R. Harris, Tyranny on Trial: The Evidence at Nuremberg (Dallas: S.M.U. Press, 1954), pp. 16-17.]
True to form, Nikitchenko dissented against the three acquittals and argued for a death sentence for Rudolf HessRudolf Hess should not be confused with the other prominent Nazi, Rudolf Hoss (also spelled Hoss or Hoess. Rudolf Hess Rudolf He in German) ( April 26, 1894 August 17, 1987) was a prominent figure in Nazi Germany and was Adolf Hitler's deputy as Nazi Part. Nikitchenko also famously said, in the lead-up to the trials, "If ... the judge is supposed to be impartial, it would only lead to unnecessary delays."
During the trials, the French judges suggested that a firing squad should be used for the military condemned. Nikitchenko fiercely resisted this, arguing that the accused were common criminals who had disgraced their military ethos and tradition.
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