@Vilia:
I agree. It is another case of the victorious imposing their beliefs upon the others. But the way they went about it set an interesting precedent. In this particular case, the allied forces couldn't guarantee a 'win' in the court so they stacked the judges.
Yep yep. Just one remark.. I don't think anyone was consciously stacking this whole thing. That's the beauty of the whole thing really. From the drive each individual person has to have internal consistency and to be able to live with yourself knowing that you did the right thing, these kinds of conclusions materiaze in people without anyone consciously driving them.
That's also why so many high ranking nazi's killed themselves at the end of WW2. With the fall of their empire came something possibly even worse: the failure of their whole thought-system. Everything they believed in and had based their lives on was proven to have failed.
In general, when you have people submerged in certain morals (spoon-fed into them by society) you don't need to force them to do anything with it anymore. They will do this themselves, because of their internal strife for being good people and for internal consistency. This is what makes a coherent society work.
This ties in with what you were saying Ivotas, only in this case it is the judges (and those standing behind them) that were seeking to be seen as 'the good guys'. Why? Perhaps popular opinion was important? Did the public desire for revenge outweigh the desire for a fair trial?
I think the same thing might apply here. It was simply the judges using the morals of society as tools and the inherent human drive for consistency and doing the right thing as a drive that made them come to these conclusions themselves.
There's this interesting study of russia in communist times. Back then, many people who simply had dissident opinions, were declared "insane" by licensed professional psychiatrists and put away in nuthouses. (for the record, the only thing "wrong" with these people was that they didn't agree with communism)
The interesting thing here is that there is actually no reason to believe that these psychiatrists were being dishonest in their diagnosises.. more than likely they really believed these patients to be insane, because after all the psychiatrists are in essence also simply people that live in society, and hence are also affected by the mores of that society. And these mores at that time happened to be that communism was the only right way.
So the russians who introduced the communist morals didn't even have to force people to act their way. They simply put the communist thought in everyone's heads through their campaigning and the populace then started to walk in line by themselves. (that's what happens everywhere btw, not just russia)
So, to play devil's advocate, perhaps, instead of the government being out of touch with the peoples' opinion, they are in tune with that of the general populace?
At the very least, they think they are.
Even Spandam thinks he is doing what he is doing for "justice" and the better of the world.