The 969th Field Artillery Battalion and the “Historical Approach” at the International Military Tribunal (sample chapter)

Abstract

The 969th Field Artillery Battalion and the “Historical Approach” at the International Military Tribunal constitutes a chapter in the monograph entitled Service in the Shadow of Justice: The Legacy of the Black American Military Court Guards in the Nuremberg Military Tribunals. This chapter documents the earliest attempt to assign Black troops to duty in Nuremberg at the start of the International Military Tribunal in 1945. It includes content from an interview with Junius Charles Heard, a descendant of a member of the 969th Field Artillery Battalion. It also examines the advocacy of Lieutenant General George S. Patton, Jr. on behalf of Black troops. The fuller work demonstrates that the assignment of Black troops to security details at the historic Nuremberg Trials was both symbolic and significant in the Long Civil Rights Movement and within the activism surrounding the desegregation of the U.S. military. Dim perceptions on the performance of the U.S. Army’s Black troops (pejoratively termed “the Negro Problem”) during WWII and the continuation of Jim Crow policies in the European Theater were factors in the exclusion of these servicemen from earlier duty at the Trials (1945-1949). By 1946, Nuremberg had become a symbol for the strivings of American racial justice while the verdicts delivered at the International Military Tribunal precipitated calls for anti-lynching legislation. A confluence of events, including slowly staged advocacy work by the Black press and by antiracists from within the U.S. military, eventually brought Black troops into courtroom duty while the service window and stakes in the Nuremberg legacy waned. America was at its finest postwar display in the Palace of Justice while simultaneously revealing a tension between its democratic ideals and actions. The Black U.S. military court guards of Nuremberg are situated in this complex and historic legacy.