On the 24th of October, 1945, the nationalization of mines, certain industrial enterprises, banks, and insurance companies was decreed in Czechoslovakia. The decrees took effect on the 27th day of October, 1945, the day of their promulgation. The purpose of this study is to examine these measures and their effects, first, on foreign-owned property in Czechoslovakia and, second, on assets of Czechoslovak nationalized enterprises located abroad. Particular emphasis will be placed on the effect of the decrees on property owned by American nationals in Czechoslovakia and on assets situated in the United States of enterprises nationalized in Czechoslovakia.

On the afternoon of October 1, 1946, the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg sentenced twelve of the twenty-two Nazi defendants to death by hanging and seven to imprisonment for terms ranging from ten years to life. Three were acquitted. Three of the six accused organizations were found to be criminal. The reading of these sentences was preceded by the reading, through the whole of September 30, of the general opinion of the Tribunal on the four counts of the indictment and, on the morning of October 1, of the opinion on the charges against each defendant.1 The Control Council for Germany considered applications for clemency for most of those convicted but did not grant them and carried out the executions of those sentenced to death on October16 with the exception of Martin Bormann who had not been found and Hermann Goering who had succeeded in committing suicide a few hours earlier. Thus came to an end what President Truman described as “ the first international criminal assize in history.” “ I have no hesitancy in declaring,” continued the President, “ that the historic precedent set at Nuremberg abundantly justifies the expenditure of effort, prodigious though it was. This precedent becomes basic in the international law of the future. The principles established and the results achieved place International Law on the side of peace as against aggressive warfare.” 2

Denazification has uniformly been accepted as one of the primary responsibilities of American Military Government in Germany under both United States and quadripartite general occupation policy statements. The United States has assumed preponderant responsibility for leadership in promoting and developing the Denazification program in Germany, first through the establishment of a comprehensive program in the American Zone and later by inducing the other Occupying Powers to accept much if not most of this program in quadripartite regulations approved by the Control Council at Berlin.

The Foreign Service of the United States has entered a new era in its development which is as significant as was the period following the Rogers Act of 1924. The signing of the Foreign Service Act of 1946 on August 13 of last year marked the culmination of a series of steps taken during World War II to enable the American Foreign Service to discharge more effectively its increasing responsibilities. Tremendous demands have been placed on the Foreign Service since 1939 as a result of the War and the decision of the United States to assume a leading role in world affairs and the preservation of international peace. Having turned its back on the relative isolation of the 1920's and early 1930's, the United States discovered that a Foreign Service which was adequate to carry out the policies of twenty years ago was far from adequate to carry out the policies of today.

The problem of the privileges and immunities of international organizations has become very prominent in recent times and has raised not a few difficult questions. While many aspects of this problem cannot yet be regarded as definitively settled, there is, on the other hand, a trend toward the development of a new uniform and general international law concerning this topic. It seems, therefore, timely to investigate briefly this problem in its different ramifications historical and theoretical.