José María Castañé collection of Benjamin Kaplan's Nuremberg war-crimes papers

American jurist Benjamin Kaplan, later a renowned scholar on the faculty of Harvard Law School and justice on the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, was a lieutenant-colonel in the US army at the end of the Second World War. While working in procurement at the Pentagon, he was selected by John Jay McCloy, assistant secretary of war, to help American prosecutors on the International Military Tribunal (IMT) in drafting an indictment which would bring together elements of Anglo-American, Continental, and Soviet law. A synthesis of such ambitious scope had no historical precedent.

It is presumed that the documents in this collection represent a selection of Kaplan's day-to-day working files at the time of the trial, such as the following: English translations of Nazi orders and legislation; US army regulations regarding policies and procedures for the prosecution; memoranda, reports, and legal arguments pertaining to the criminal charges aimed at the Nazi leadership.

As the equivalent of two or three file-cabinet drawers, the material that has come to Houghton Library likely represents a fraction of Kaplan's Nuremberg papers; he must certainly have handled many more documents than these four linear feet in order to do his work for the IMT over the course of a year.