Nuremberg T rials
Part of a series of thirteen trials that began on November 20, 1945, and lasted until April 1949. In these trials 207 Nazis were charged with conspiracy to wage war, crimes against humanity, crimes against peace, and war crimes.
The trials were held at the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg, since this was one of the few courthouses that had not been damaged during the air raids and because the city of Nuremberg had been the site for all the National Socialist German Worker’s Party (NSDAP) rallies. The International Military Tribunal (IMT), directed by France, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States of America against major Nazi war criminals, led the first trial. The IMT not only sentenced individuals but also banned organizations such as the Gestapo (Geheime Staatspolizei, political police), the SS (Schutzstaffel, Protective Squadron), and the SS Totenkopfverbande (SS Death Head Special Units).The Nuremberg War Crimes Trials reflected the widespread sense among the anti-Nazi allies that this war was not supposed to end like other wars. World War II was not a normal war, one which had been fought according to the traditional rules of war. The German army engaged in systematic atrocities against civilians on an unprecedented scale. More than 50 million people had died in the war—more than half of the victims were civilians. The Soviet Union alone lost more than 25 million people—soldiers and civilians. When the German army invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, special task forces followed the army, killing off between 2 and 3 million civilians in mass shootings (Marrus 1997, 21). Adolf Hitler declared the war in the East a
Looking down on defendants' dock at the Nuremberg trials. (Corbis)
racial war with the goal to completely destroy the Jewish population as well as Bolshevist ideology.
Of nearly 6 million Russian prisoners of war, 60 percent were severely mistreated to the point of death. In Germany, those who opposed the Nazi system, from Communists to Social Democrats as well as Jews, Sinti, Roma, Slavs, Catholics, and homosexuals from not only Germany but also from countries under German occupation were put into concentration and extermination camps. The Nazis murdered more than 11 million people in concentration and death camps. Never before in history did a government plan the systematic murder of entire ethnicities, religious groups, and political enemies and attempt to carry out such a plan. The slaughter of political opponents, prisoners of war, and ordinary people persecuted for reasons of race, religion, and nationality was unimaginable. Therefore, the Allied powers agreed, albeit not, at first, unanimously, that individuals responsible for these horrors had to be brought to trial. It was generally accepted that in some way Germany must be cleansed of Nazis, that those guilty of sustaining Nazi rule must be punished, and that it was essential, if future peace were to be secured, that Germans be convinced of the error of Nazi views and persuaded to assent to more democratic and peaceful values. Disagreements arose over both trials and punishment, with Roosevelt insisting all criminals receive a fair trial in the countries where their crimes were committed.The Allies later agreed to punish, after a trial, those Nazis as well as their collaborators who were responsible for war crimes, crimes against peace, and crimes against humanity. In November 1943 Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin agreed that: “At the time of the granting of any armistice to any Government which may be set up in Germany, those German officers and men and members of the Nazi Party who have been responsible for or have taken a consenting part in the... atrocities, massacres and executions will be sent back to the countries in which their abominable deeds were done in order that they may be judged and punished according to the laws of these liberated countries” (Moscow Declaration in Marrus 1997, 20—21).
In the same month, Stalin suggested in secret talks with Churchill and Roosevelt that the whole German General Staff be liquidated. Churchill shared Stalin’s position— his idea was to shoot all the top Nazis after the war without a trial. Stalin and Churchill agreed it would take too long to establish an international court and that it would appear to be victor’s justice. Only in May 1945 did the United States change its approach toward the questions of how to deal with the Nazi war crimes. Harry S. Truman, the new American president, suggested the creation of a War Crimes Tribunal, which was accepted by his Soviet, British, and French allies. With this, the way had been opened for the establishment of the IMT.The resolution that established legal precedent for the trial was the London Agreement. Emerging between June 26 and August 8, 1945, the agreement, signed by France, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States, affirmed the authority of the Moscow Declaration and judicial terms for the Nazi war crimes trials, including necessary pretrial investigative measures. The agreement also created the Charter of the IMT. Following the London Agreement, Allied Control Commission Law 10 was developed in December 1945. Law 10 prosecuted crimes that did not involve commission of war. Out of the mandates established under the London Agreement and Law 10, the Nuremberg Trials emerged.
In the first trial, twenty-three Nazis were indicted on October 20, 1945. Four days later, one of the defendants, Robert Ley, committed suicide. Led by the U. S. chief counsel, U.S. Supreme Court justice Robert H. Jackson, the IMT prosecuted the remaining top Nazis on the charges of conspiracy to wage war, crimes against humanity, crimes against peace, and war crimes. The defendants included: Hermann Goring, reich marshall, Luftwaffe chief, and president of the Reichstag, among other titles; Martin Bormann, Hitler’s private secretary and head of the Party Chancellery (tried in absentia); Karl Donitz, admiral and head of state after Hitler’s suicide; Hans Frank, governor general of occupied Poland; Wilhelm Frick, interior minister; Hans Fritzsche, head of radio; Walther Funk, economics minister; Rudolf Hess, deputy to Hitler; Alfred Jodl, chief of operations for the German High Command; Ernst Kaltenbrunner, reich security main office chief; Wilhelm Keitel, chief of staff of the German High Command; Konstantin von Neurath, reich minister of foreign affairs and reich protector; Franz von Papen, vice reich chancellor; Erich Raeder, commander in chief of the German naval forces; Joachim von Ribbentrop, foreign minister; Alfred Rosenberg, reich minister for eastern occupied territories; Fritz Sauckel, chief of forced labor; Hjalmar Schacht, reichsbank president; Baldur von Schirach, leader of the Hitler Youth; Arthur Seyss-Inquart, reich commissioner for the Netherlands; Albert Speer, reich minister of armaments and munitions; and Julius Streicher, editor of Der Sturmer.
When the IMT-led trial ended, the sentences were delivered on September 30 and October 1, 1946. Seven were sent to prison, and three were acquitted. Twelve were sentenced to death, but only ten were executed. The most notorious of the defendants sentenced to die was Goring, who committed suicide hours before his scheduled execution. On October 15, 1946, he swallowed a cyanide capsule allegedly smuggled into his cell, perhaps by an American guard sympathetic to Goring. This trial was the only one led by the IMT, owing to increased disparagement over the legality of American prosecution and the lack of full Allied involvement.
The United States Office of the Military Government for Germany carried out the remaining trials between December 1946 and April 1949. American judges and prosecutors, in the name of the United States, carried out charges in the trials. For many reasons, it was important for the Americans to show the world the evidence that exposed the criminality of the cases, including establishment of links between Nazi ideology, formation of criminal intent, conspiracy to commit torture and murder, and global war. These trials included: the Doctors’ (Medical) Trials, the Milch Case, the Justice Case, the Pohl/ WVHA Case, the Flick Case, the I.G. Far- ben Case, the Hostage Case, the RUSHA Case, the Einsatzgruppen Case (mobile death units), the Krupp Case, the Ministries Trials, and the High Command Trial. The Americans who presided over these trials included Walter Beals, presiding judge, who was chief justice of the Washington Supreme Court; Johnson Crawford, a former judge from Oklahoma; Harold Sebring, a Florida State Supreme Court justice; and Victor Swearingen, an assistant U.S. attorney general.
The American-led prosecution of the Nazi criminals was not without controversy, however. America faced worldwide criticism for conducting these trials. Germans and Americans alike challenged the legal authority of the trials and were concerned about their effect on the German population.
In October 1946 a Republican senator from Ohio, Robert A. Taft, called the Nuremberg Trials an act of vengeance and retrospective judgment that would discredit the idea of justice in Europe for years to come. Nevertheless, the trials provided an insight into the criminality of the individuals who worked and supported the regime, clearly outlining overwhelming evidence of conspiracy to commit crimes. It is important to note that throughout Europe, war crimes trials were conducted against Nazis and their collaborators. While the Nuremberg Trials were not the only court proceedings thattried Nazi criminals, associates, and collaborators, they had an important effect on the conduct of similar international trials.
Wendy Adele-Marie Maier
See also American Occupation Zone; Denazification; Jackson, Robert H.; U.S. Plans for Postwar Germany (1941-1945); World War II
References and Further Reading
Cesarinri, David. “War Crimes.” In The
Holocaust Encyclopedia. Ed. Walter Laqueur. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2001, 673-683.
Davidson, Eugene. The Trial of the Germans: An Account of the Twenty-Two Defendants before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. New York: Macmillan, 1966.
Gilbert, G. M. Nuremberg Diary. New York: Signet, 1947.
Marrus, Michael R. The Nuremberg War Crimes Trial, 1945—1946. Boston: Bedford St. Martin’s, 1997.
National Archives and Records Service. Records of the International Military Tribunal (IMT) at Nuremberg (RG 238), College Park, Maryland.