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Comment by dan-robertson | Hacker News Reader

Is it actually ironic? Weren’t the soviets well-known for show trials? That is, were they arguing for a legal process or a legitimising one? I don’t know the reason for the British preference but I do feel there are arguments for it, e.g. if such a tribunal was expected to have predetermined results, why associate your legitimate legal system with it.

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Not only that, there was agreement among the allies on which war criminals would be turned over to whom for punishment. So the USSR might have preferred a trial since those who committed the worst offenses in the USSR would be turned over to them instead of being shot by the British.

A good example are the Cossacks that fought on the side of the Axis. Although they were taken as POWs by the US and UK, they were put on trains and shipped back to the USSR to their eventual deaths.

Most germans POW in Russia were never returned back to their country after the war and died in russian camps.

That's what people believe. It took quite a whilemlonger for German POWs in the USSR tonreturn, butvthe Adenauer government ultimately srtuckna deal, and they returned. By the way, the survival rate of those POWs wasn't that bad neither. Especially given the overall situation of the USSR at the time.

They sort of have a nice record to show for it:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jallianwala_Bagh_massacre

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