Bernard David Meltzer was an American legal scholar who was a professor of law at the University of Chicago Law School and a prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials. He was a leading scholar on labor law and a drafter of the U.N. Charter.
Early life and education
Meltzer was born on November 21, 1914, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His parents, Julius Meltzer and Rose Wolkov Meltzer, were Russian immigrants, and he was one of six children. After graduating from high school, Meltzer enrolled at Temple University but left after four semesters to study at the University of Chicago in 1934. He described the move as “an exhilarating and transforming experience.” He graduated with an A.B. in 1935 before completing a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School in 1937, graduating first in his class. Meltzer received a graduate fellowship to study at Harvard Law School, where he obtained a LL.M. in 1938. He married Jean Sulzberger in 1947.
Career
Before and during World War II
Between 1938 and 1940, Meltzer worked in the general counsel's office of the Securities and Exchange Commission and later as special assistant to chairman Jerome Frank, a fellow Chicago alumnus. He moved back to Chicago in 1940 to join the law firm Mayer, Meyer, Austrian and Platt, but the following year he was called back to Washington, D.C. to work as the legal consultant to the National Defense Advisory Commission in the midst of the Second World War. Between 1941 and 1943, Meltzer served in the State Department as Special Assistant to the Assistant Secretary of State Dean Acheson and as Acting Chief of the Foreign Funds Control Division.
In his roles at the State Department, Meltzer successfully helped to persuade the State and Justice Departments to adopt a broader interpretation of the Neutrality Acts to allow the delivery of Lend-Lease shipments to American allies in the war. He also helped to draft the initial Lend-Lease agreements with allied nations and attempted, without success, to gain government approval for funding to liberate Jews in Eastern Europe who were being threatened with deportation and extermination by Nazi forces. On December 8, 1941, the day after the Attack on Pearl Harbor, Meltzer tried to enlist in the Navy but was ultimately rejected due to his poor eyesight. In 1943, he was commissioned as a naval officer and assigned to the Office of Strategic Services. When the war ended, Meltzer was assigned to assist in drafting the U.N. Charter in April 1945.
Nuremberg trials
In 1946, Meltzer was recruited by Francis M. Shea, a New Dealer and member of the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration, to serve as a prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials. Meltzer led a team of lawyers who were tasked with gathering evidence in support of the “economic case” against the Nazis, targeting defendants who had assisted on financing or building the Nazi war effort with knowledge of the Nazis' motives, as well as defendants who were responsible for plundering occupied German territories and for deporting and exploiting millions of slave laborers. Meltzer carried out the pre-trial interrogation of Hermann Goering, Hitler's second-in-command, and presented the prosecution case at trial against Walther Funk, who was the Economics Minister and President of the Reichsbank during the war. The evidence adduced by Meltzer of Funk's involvement in the genocide was later used by French and Soviet prosecutors. Meltzer was also involved in the presentation of the concentration camp case.