Investigating the acts of desperate men.

Before there was a UN, there was an organization bearing its name--the United Nations War Crimes Commission (UNWCC). On 20 October 1943, more than two years before the UN Charter came into effect, representatives of 17 nations--Australia, Belgium, Canada, China, Czechoslovakia, France, Greece, India, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, South Africa, United Kingdom, United States and Yugoslavia--met in London at the British Foreign Office to establish the UNWCC. They gave the new agency the tasks of receiving information about war crimes, developing and recording evidence, identifying the persons responsible, and referring cases to the Governments concerned for legal action.

Well before the delegates met to create the UNWCC, a flood of reports about atrocities against civilians in Nazi-occupied Europe had moved public opinion, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and Governments to demand the punishment of war criminals at the end of the global conflict. In a message from 10 Downing Street on 25 October 1941, United Kingdom Prime Minister Winston Churchill denounced as "butcheries" the execution of hostages by "Hitler's Nazis" in France and elsewhere.

"Retribution for these crimes must henceforward take its place among the major purposes of the war", he said. That same day in Washington, United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt called these reprisal murders "the acts of desperate men who know in their hearts that they cannot win". He said: "Frightfulness can never bring peace to Europe. It only sows the seeds of hatred which will one day bring frightful retribution."

Under the auspices of the inter-Allied Conference on the Punishment of War Crimes, the representatives of nine occupied countries--Belgium, Czechoslovakia, France, Greece, Luxembourg, Norway Netherlands, Poland and Yugoslavia--met at St. James's Palace in London and, on 13 january 1942, signed a declaration placing "among their principal war aims the punishment, through the channel of organized justice", of those responsible for acts of violence against the civilian populations.

Responding to information about new waves of atrocities in their countries, the nine Governments together presented notes to Great Britain, the Soviet Union and the United States in July 1942, urgently appealing for timely measures "to save innumerable innocent lives in the territories occupied by the enemy". In response, the leaders of the three Powers committed their Governments to the idea that those accused of war crimes should stand trial before courts in the countries where the atrocities took place.

Over the next 15 months, while global war ground on relentlessly, several NGOs focused on the definition of war crimes and the prosecution of those responsible for them. Issues with far-reaching implications were considered. Should "superior orders" be allowed as a defence? Could Heads of State and other high officials be held personally responsible? Was an international criminal court needed? When the UNWCC began its work near the end of 1943, several members were among the experts who had studied these questions. The UNWCC soon set out to elaborate such concepts as war crimes, crimes against humanity, and crimes against peace.

National offices affiliated with UNWCC were opened. To deal with cases from Asia, the Far Eastern and Pacific Sub-Commission was established in China. Having recommended the creation of a UN War Crimes Court, the UNWCC assisted the International Military Tribunals at Nuremberg that tried major Nazi war criminals.

When Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin ended their conference in Moscow on 30 October 1943, they issued the Declaration of Atrocities in the name of the three Allied Powers and the 32 "United Nations"--as they were called in the text--warning those responsible for "atrocities, massacres and executions" that they would be judged and punished for these "abominable deeds" in the countries where the acts were committed. Moreover, lists of the accused would be compiled and those named pursued "to the uttermost ends of the earth" and delivered to their "accusers in order that justice may be done"

By the time the UNWCC ended on 31 March 1948, it had prepared 80 lists, naming war criminals, suspects and material witnesses, some 36,529 persons and 2 81 groups--about a quarter of them were brought to trial.