This thesis analyses the processes through which the United States sought to influence the political and social reconstruction of occupied Japan and Germany in the aftermath of the Second World War. An important aspect of this was debate within the US over what kind of peace settlement to be imposed on the defeated states. The debate over whether this settlement should be harsh or more moderate involved different visions of the political and social reconstruction and futures of Japan and Germany. While both arguments shared the same basic aims of democratisation, deradicalisation, and demilitarisation, they different substantially on how to achieve these aims. One aspect of moderate plans was the establishment of international criminal tribunals to try the leadership of the defeated regimes deemed responsible for the atrocities committed. An important part of the prosecution arguments was the idea of the victimisation of the Japanese and German people by their own governments. This was an important part of moderate peace arguments and extended into the political and social reforms implemented during the occupations. This idea of victimisation was not only held by the Japanese and German people, but by the occupiers as well.

in English Dissertation Thesis David Kohout: Legal-Historical Aspects of Punishment of Nazi Criminals on the Background of the Adolf Eichmann Trial This Dissertation on the topic of "Legal-Historical Aspects of Punishment of Nazi Criminals on the Background of the Adolf Eichmann Trial" seeks to analyze the main approaches to the prosecution and punishment of the Nazi crimes. It was chosen to use the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem in years 1961 - 1962 as a connecting thread of this whole work. It was so not only due to the individual remarkableness of the trial but also due to the fact that it was in many ways a very illustrative for the previous legal development until that time. Additionally, many commentators of this trial attribute it a great impact on the renewal of the interest in the prosecution of former Nazis who were implicated in perpetration of crimes committed until 1945 and who remained at large after the end of war. Therefore this Thesis goes beyond the Eichmann trial and focuses on its broader context in material but also personal sense (in the text it often referred to cases of prosecution of close collaborators of Adolf Eichmann). In the opening chapters this Dissertation, however, starts with events that go far back in time before the Adolf Eichmann trial. This is for the...