Walter Rockler, 81; Prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials

Walter Rockler, a lawyer who prosecuted Nazi-era German bankers and industrialists during the Nuremberg trials of the late 1940s and at his death was a senior partner at the Washington law firm of Arnold & Porter, has died. He was 81.

Rockler died March 8 at his home in Rockville, Md. He had been battling lung cancer.

He was often called upon to discuss his role at Nuremberg, which he came to regard as a definitive part of his life.

He was a year out of law school when he joined the war crimes chief counsel’s office in 1947. For the next two years in Germany, he successfully prosecuted several cases against business executives and bankers charged with Nazi collaboration.

Decades later, Rockler was called back into government service to identify and deport Nazis who were in the United States illegally. In 1979 and 1980, he served as the first director of the Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigation. The Immigration and Naturalization Service had previously performed that office’s duties.

The experience at Nuremberg left him with mixed feelings.

The trials “had important symbolic value ... but no substantial impact,” he said in 1995 at a conference marking the proceedings’ 50th anniversary. “Wars and savagery have not been deterred, and I see no prospect that they will be deterred or punished in the near future.

“You almost can’t exonerate any country in the world from violations of the Nuremberg principles,” he added.

He also used his Nuremberg experience to criticize the NATO-led bombing of the former Yugoslavia during the 1990s. He said the bombing violated a key assertion of Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, who headed the U.S. prosecution staff at Nuremberg, that there was no economic or political justification for acts of aggression.

In a controversial 1999 essay in the Chicago Tribune, Rockler wrote: “The rationale that we are simply enforcing international morality, even if it were true, would not excuse the military aggression and widespread killing that it entails. It also does not lessen the culpability of the authors of this aggression.”

Rockler was intrigued when former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev started the Foundation for the Development of Democracy and World Peace in 2000 to foster ties between the U.S. and Russia. Rockler became a board member and did legal and tax work for the organization.

Walter James Rockler was born in Minneapolis and grew up in Chicago. He was a 1940 graduate of the University of Chicago and a 1946 graduate of Harvard University’s law school.

After Japanese language training, he served in the Marine Corps during World War II, doing intelligence work in the Pacific theater. His decorations included the Bronze Star and Navy Commendation Medal.

He spent the last 36 years at Arnold & Porter, part of the time as head of its tax section. He had worked in general practice in Chicago and New York before being recruited by the firm.

Survivors include his wife of 52 years, Aino Allekand Rockler of Rockville; four children, James Rockler of Boulder, Colo., Nicolas Rockler of Boston and Elliot Rockler and Julia Tillery, both of Derwood, Md.; a brother; and nine grandchildren.