There will never be a Nuremberg for the goons

Your morning update from Salon.

The news, in brief …

Make me smarter …

America needs a moral reckoning in 2026

Defeating Trumpism requires fluency in moral language. Read more.

ICE breakers…

Given how large they loom in the public conception of international law, it can be a shock to learn any of the actual facts about the Nuremberg trials.

At the close of World War II, as a gesture toward justice for the deaths of millions, four countries came together to put 24 people on trial. Many of the marquee Nazi names had helpfully offed themselves once it was clear that a planned “thousand-year Reich” was coming down around their ears in Year 13.

Out of a Nazi Party that counted 8 million people as members, only two dozen cabinet members, ministers and propagandists stood trial in the initial International Military Tribunal. Subsequent trials led to many more guilty verdicts among doctors, officers, scientists and generals who had participated in Nazi war crimes. The overwhelming majority of those convicted were out of prison before the close of the 1950s.

The work of figuring out justice for the workaday Nazi fell to the provisional governments left standing. The party once had 10% of the German population in its ranks. Pulling it out, root and branch, was not possible. Members were helpfully divided into hardcores who joined before Hitler’s rise, scientists who might be helpful in the U.S. and U.S.S.R.’s ongoing space race and everyone else. The process of disentangling true believers from that last group was cumbersome and messy, ultimately falling to the wayside as the U.S.S.R. and Western powers turned their attentions toward fighting each other.

Denazification may have fizzled out before reaching its ultimate goal, but it's a useful historical precedent for whatever comes after the administration of President Donald Trump.

Nothing less than new Nurembergs should be acceptable for the president’s top cronies, the ones who gave the orders to carry out war crimes and attacks on citizens. But what of the troops who shoved their way into restaurant kitchens and courthouses? How do you deal with the masked ICE goons in graphic t-shirts and jeans who gleefully signed up to rip families apart? What happens to an officer who shoots an American in the face in front of a crowd of witnesses, thinking themself untouchable?

The incomplete work of denazification in Germany does provide a helpful precedent. The U.S. would never fully get behind a law like 1945’s Military Government Law No. 8, which barred former Nazi Party members from all employment above laborer, if it were targeted at ICE jackboots. There's too much baked-in reverence for law enforcement officers among the citizenry.

But I choose to believe in the can-do spirit of American individualism. There are approximately 6,000 ICE deportation officers nationwide. Each of us can work separately to disinvite federal thugs from groups and gatherings, find reasons to toss their job applications and avoid swiping right on their dating profiles. With enough effort, we could make the day-to-day work of individually shaming the troops in Trump’s racist war a point of civic pride.

Our own history, let alone Germany’s, tells us that this attempt at stitching the union back together won’t be entirely successful. However, if it means the people who tore Mahmoud Khalil from his pregnant wife will have to hide their faces for shame and not impunity, if it means the man who shot Renee Good and his coworkers don’t feel comfortable swapping stories over a beer in public, we owe it to ourselves to try.

What do you think? Are these ICE agents going to melt back into polite society once this is all over? How could we send a message that what Trump administration is doing can never happen again? Sound off in the comments.

Support the progressive journalism you trust. Become a Salon member today!

Before you go …

War has become fashionable again for the GOP

The right's detour into pacifism under Trump was never going to stick. Read more.

ALSO FROM SALON