 | This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Judges' Trial" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(February 2013) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
 | You can helpexpand this article with text translated fromthe corresponding article in German. (January 2014)Click [show] for important translation instructions.
|
49°27.2603′N11°02.9103′E / 49.4543383°N 11.0485050°E /49.4543383; 11.0485050
TheJudges' Trial (German:Juristenprozess; or, theJustice Trial, or, officially,The United States of America vs. Josef Altstötter, et al.) was the third of the 12 trials forwar crimes theU.S. authorities held in their occupation zone inGermany inNuremberg after the end ofWorld War II. These twelve trials were all held before U.S. military courts, not before theInternational Military Tribunal, but took place in the same rooms at thePalace of Justice. The twelve U.S. trials are collectively known as the "Subsequent Nuremberg Trials" or, more formally, as the "Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals" (NMT).
The defendants in this case were 16 German jurists and lawyers. Nine had been officials of theReich Ministry of Justice, the others were prosecutors and judges of theSpecial Courts andPeople's Courts ofNazi Germany. They were—among other charges—held responsible for implementing and furthering the Nazi "racial purity" program through the eugenic and racial laws.
The judges in this case, held in Military Tribunal III, wereCarrington T. Marshall (presiding judge), former Chief Justice of theSupreme Court of Ohio;James T. Brand, Associate Justice of theSupreme Court of Oregon; Mallory B. Blair, formerly judge of theThird Court of Appeals of Texas; andJustin Woodward Harding of the Bar of the State of Ohio as an alternate judge. Marshall had to retire because of illness on June 19, 1947, at which point Brand became president and Harding a full member of the tribunal. The Chief of Counsel for the Prosecution wasTelford Taylor; his deputy wasCharles M. La Follette. Theindictment was presented on January 4, 1947; the trial lasted from March 5 to December 4, 1947. Ten of the defendants were found guilty; four received sentences of lifetime imprisonment (all four were released by 1957), and six received prison sentences of varying lengths (five, seven or 10 years; all but one, who died in 1950, were released by 1951). Four persons were acquitted of all charges.
Count 4 applied only to Altstötter, Cuhorst, Engert, Joel (with respect to the SS) and to Cuhorst, Oeschy, Nebelung, and Rothaug concerning the NSDAP leadership. Both organizations had been found criminal previously by theIMT.
Count 1 was dropped: the court declared the charge to be outside its jurisdiction. Judge Blair filed a dissenting opinion that stated that the court should have made a statement that the Military Tribunals of the NMT in factdid have jurisdiction over charges of "conspiracy to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity".
All defendants pleaded "not guilty".
| Name | Image | Position | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|
| Josef Altstötter |  | Chief of the civil law and procedure division of the Ministry of Justice | Acquitted on counts 2 and 3, 5 years, including time already served on count 4; released December 1949; died 1979 inNuremberg |
| Paul Barnickel [de] |  | Senior public prosecutor of the People's Court | Acquitted; died 1966 inMunich |
| Hermann Cuhorst [de] |  | Chief justice of the Special Court | Acquitted; died 1991 inKressbronn am Bodensee |
| Karl Engert [de] |  | Chief of the penal administrative division in the Ministry of Justice | Mistrial declared due to illness; died 1951 |
| Günther Joël [de] |  | Legal advisor and chief prosecutor of the Ministry of Justice | 10 years, released 1951; died 1978 |
| Herbert Klemm |  | State Secretary in the Ministry of Justice | Life imprisonment; commuted to 20 years, released February 1957; Died July 1963 in Starnberg[1][circular reference] |
| Ernst Lautz [de] |  | Chief Public Prosecutor of the People's Court | 10 years; released January 1951; died 1979 inLübeck |
| Wolfgang Mettgenberg [de] |  | Representative of the criminal legislation and administration division of the Ministry of Justice | 10 years; died in prison 1950 |
| Günther Nebelung [de] |  | Chief justice of the Fourth Senate, People's Court | Acquitted; died 1970 inSeesen |
| Rudolf Oeschey [de] |  | Chief judge of the Special Court at Nuremberg | Life imprisonment; commuted to 20 years, released 1955; died September 12, 1980, in Neuss |
| Hans Petersen [de] |  | Chief justice of the First Senate, People's Court | Acquitted; died in 1963 |
| Oswald Rothaug |  | Senior public prosecutor of the People's Court; Chief Justice of the Special Court | Life imprisonment; commuted to 20 years; released December 1956; died 1967 in Cologne |
| Curt Rothenberger |  | President of the Court of Appeals in Hamburg from 1935 to 1942, later became State Secretary in the Ministry of Justice | 7 years; released 1950; committed suicide in 1959 inHamburg when his role in the war was publicised.[2] |
| Franz Schlegelberger |  | State Secretary, later Acting Minister of Justice | Life imprisonment; released in 1951 for health reasons; died 1970 inFlensburg |
| Wilhelm von Ammon |  | Counsellor of criminal legislation and administration division in the Ministry of Justice | 10 years; released January 31, 1951; died 1992 |
| Karl Westphal [de] | Counsellor, criminal legislation and administration in the Ministry of Justice | Committed suicide after the indictment |
The highest-ranking officials of the Nazi judicial system could not be tried:Franz Gürtner, Minister of Justice, died in 1941;Otto Georg Thierack, Minister of Justice since 1942, had committed suicide, as hadReichsgericht PresidentErwin Bumke;Roland Freisler, the President of thePeople's Court since 1942, was killed in a 1945bombing raid on Berlin;Günther Vollmer, theGauführer of Nazi jurists, had been killed in 1945. One who was alive but not tried wasHans Globke, who played a significant role in drafting and interpreting the infamousNuremberg Laws and worked at the Reich Ministry of the Interior for the duration of the war.[3] After the war ended Globke served as Chief of Staff for Adenauer in the West German Government from 1953 to 1963. He was still under scrutiny for his involvement with the Nazi Party when in 1963 East Germany held a show trial where he was convicted in absentia of War Crimes and sentenced to life in prison. However, East German law was not recognized in West Germany where Globke lived, so he ended up not serving any time. He died at age 74 in February 1973 at his home in the city ofBonn.[4]
All convicts were found guilty on all charges brought before them, except Rothaug, who was found guilty only on count 3 of the indictment, while he was found not guilty on counts 2 and 4. However, the court commented in its judgment that:
By his manner and methods he made his court an instrumentality of terror and won the fear and hatred of the population. From the evidence of his closest associates as well as his victims, we find that Oswald Rothaug represented in Germany the personification of the secret Nazi intrigue and cruelty. He was and is a sadistic and evil man. Under any civilized judicial system he could have been impeached and removed from office or convicted of malfeasance in office on account of the scheming malevolence with which he administered injustice.[5]
The public considered the sentences generally too low.[citation needed][vague] Most of the convicts were released already in the early 1950s; some (Lautz, Rothenberger, Schlegelberger) even received retirement pensions inWest Germany. The guide to German law entitledDas Recht der Gegenwart is still being published under the name Franz Schlegelberger (ISBN 3-8006-2260-2).
The Judges' Trial was the inspiration for the 1959 teleplayJudgment at Nuremberg, and the 1961 movie adaptation,Judgment at Nuremberg, starringSpencer Tracy,Burt Lancaster,Richard Widmark,Marlene Dietrich,Maximilian Schell,Judy Garland,Montgomery Clift,Werner Klemperer andWilliam Shatner.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Other | |
