TheNuremberg trials were held by theAllies against leaders of the defeatedNazi Germany for plotting and carrying out invasions of other countries acrossEurope and committingatrocities against their citizens inWorld War II.
Between 1939 and 1945, Nazi Germany invaded many countries across Europe, inflicting 27 million deaths in theSoviet Union alone. Proposals for how to punish the defeated Nazi leaders ranged from ashow trial (the Soviet Union) tosummary executions (theUnited Kingdom). In mid-1945, France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States agreed to convene a joint tribunal inNuremberg,occupied Germany, with theNuremberg Charter as its legal instrument. Between 20 November 1945 and 1 October 1946, theInternational Military Tribunal (IMT) tried 22 of the most important surviving leaders of Nazi Germany in the political, military, and economic spheres, as well as six German organizations. The purpose of the trial was not just to convict the defendants but also to assemble irrefutable evidence of Nazi crimes, offer a history lesson to the defeated Germans, and delegitimize the traditional German elite.
The IMT verdict followed the prosecution in declaring thecrime of plotting and wagingaggressive war "the supreme international crime" because "it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole".[1] Most defendants were also charged withwar crimes andcrimes against humanity, and the systematic murder of millions of Jews inthe Holocaust was significant to the trial.Twelve further trials were conducted by the United States against lower-level perpetrators and focused more on the Holocaust. Controversial at the time for theirretroactive criminalization of aggression, the trials' innovation of holding individuals responsible for violations of international law is considered "the true beginning ofinternational criminal law".[2]
In early 1942, representatives of ninegovernments-in-exile from German-occupied Europe issueda declaration to demand an international court to try the German crimes committed in occupied countries. The United States and United Kingdom refused to endorse this proposal, citing the failure ofwar crimes prosecutions followingWorld War I.[7][8] The London-basedUnited Nations War Crimes Commission—without Soviet participation—first met in October 1943 and became bogged down in the scope of its mandate, with Belgian juristMarcel de Baer and Czech legal scholarBohuslav Ečer arguing for a broader definition ofwar crimes that would include "the crime of war".[9][10] On 1 November 1943, the Soviet Union, United Kingdom, and United States issued theMoscow Declaration, warning Nazi leadership of the signatories' intent to "pursue them to the uttermost ends of the earth...in order that justice may be done".[11] The declaration stated high-ranking Nazis who had committed crimes in several countries would be dealt with jointly, while others would be tried where they had committed their crimes.[11][12][9]
Aron Trainin (center, with moustache) speaks at the London Conference.Aerial view of the Palace of Justice in 1945, with the prison attached behind itRuins ofNuremberg,c. 1945
At the London Conference, held from 26 June to 2 August 1945, representatives ofFrance, theSoviet Union, theUnited Kingdom, and theUnited States negotiated the form that the trial would take. Until the end of the negotiations, it was not clear that any trial would be held at all.[25]
The offences that would be prosecuted were crimes against peace,crimes against humanity, and war crimes.[26] At the conference, it was debated whether wars of aggression were prohibited in existingcustomary international law; regardless, before the charter was adopted there was no law providing for criminal responsibility for aggression.[27][28] Despite misgivings from other Allies, American negotiator andSupreme Court justiceRobert H. Jackson threatened the United States' withdrawal if aggression was not prosecuted because it had been the rationale forAmerican entry into World War II.[29] However, Jackson conceded on defining crimes against peace; the other three Allies were opposed because it would undermine the freedom of action of theUnited Nations Security Council.[30]
War crimes already existed in international law as criminal violations of thelaws and customs of war, but these did not apply to a government's treatment of its own citizens.[31][32] Legal experts sought a way to try crimes against German citizens, such as theGerman Jews.[33] A Soviet proposal for a charge of "crimes against civilians" was renamed "crimes against humanity" at Jackson's suggestion[34] after previous uses of the term in thepost-World War ICommission of Responsibilities and in failed efforts to prosecute the perpetrators of theArmenian genocide.[35] The British proposal to define crimes against humanity was largely accepted, with the final wording being "murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population".[36][37] The final version of the charter limited the tribunal's jurisdiction over crimes against humanity to those committed as part of a war of aggression.[38][39] Both the United States—concerned that itsJim Crow system ofracial segregation not be labeled a crime against humanity—and the Soviet Union wanted to avoid giving an international court jurisdiction over a government's treatment of its own citizens.[40][41]
The charter upended the traditional view ofinternational law by holding individuals,rather than states, responsible for breaches.[42][26] The other three Allies' proposal to limit the definition of the crimes to acts committed by the defeated Axis was rejected by Jackson. Instead, the charter limited the jurisdiction of the court to Germany's actions.[43][44] Article 7 prevented the defendants from claimingsovereign immunity,[45] and the plea of acting undersuperior orders was left for the judges to decide.[46] The trial was held under modifiedcommon law.[47] The negotiators decided that the tribunal's permanent seat would be in Berlin, while the trial would be held at thePalace of Justice inNuremberg.[38][48] Located in theAmerican occupation zone, Nuremberg was a symbolic location as the site ofNazi rallies. The Palace of Justice was relatively intact but needed to be renovated for the trial due tobomb damage; it had an attached prison where the defendants could be held.[49][48] On 8 August, the Nuremberg Charter was signed in London.[50]
In early 1946, there were a thousand employees from the four countries' delegations in Nuremberg, of which about two thirds were from the United States.[51] Besides legal professionals, there were many social-science researchers, psychologists, translators, interpreters, andgraphic designers, the last to make the many charts used during the trial.[52] Each state appointed a prosecution team and two judges, one being a deputy without voting rights.[53][54]
Jackson was appointed the United States' chief prosecutor, whom historianKim Christian Priemel described as "a versatile politician and a remarkable orator, if not a great legal thinker".[55] The United States prosecution believedNazism was the product of a German deviation from the West (theSonderweg thesis) and sought to correct this deviation with a trial that would serve both retributive and educational purposes.[56] As the largest delegation, it would take on the bulk of the prosecutorial effort.[57] At Jackson's recommendation, the United States appointed judgesFrancis Biddle andJohn Parker.[58] The British chief prosecutor wasHartley Shawcross,Attorney General for England and Wales, assisted by his predecessorDavid Maxwell Fyfe.[59][60][61] Although the chief British judge,Sir Geoffrey Lawrence (Lord Justice of Appeal), was the nominal president of the tribunal, in practice Biddle exercised more authority.[58]
The French prosecutor,François de Menthon, had just overseen trials of the leaders ofVichy France;[50] he resigned in January 1946 and was replaced byAuguste Champetier de Ribes.[62] The French judges wereHenri Donnedieu de Vabres, a professor of criminal law, and deputyRobert Falco, a judge of theCour de Cassation who had represented France at the London Conference.[63][62] The French government tried to appoint staff untainted by collaboration with the Vichy regime; some appointments, including Champetier de Ribes, were of those who had been in theFrench resistance.[64][65][66] Expecting a show trial, the Soviet Union[67] initially appointed as chief prosecutorIona Nikitchenko, who had presided over the Moscow trials, but he was made a judge and replaced byRoman Rudenko, a show trial prosecutor[68] chosen for his skill as an orator.[69] The Soviet judges and prosecutors were not permitted to make any major decisions without consulting a commission in Moscow led by Soviet politicianAndrei Vyshinsky; the resulting delays hampered the Soviet effort to set the agenda.[67][58] The influence of the Soviet delegation was also constrained by limited English proficiency, lack of interpreters, and unfamiliarity with diplomacy and international institutions.[70]
Requests byChaim Weizmann, the president of theWorld Zionist Organization, as well as theProvisional Government of National Unity in Poland, for an active role in the trial justified by their representation of victims of Nazi crimes were rejected.[71] The Soviet Union invited prosecutors from its allies, including Poland,Czechoslovakia, andYugoslavia; Denmark and Norway also sent a delegation.[72] Although the Polish delegation was not empowered to intervene in the proceedings, it submitted evidence and an indictment, succeeding at drawing some attention to crimes committed against Polish Jews and non-Jews.[73]
Handing over the indictment to the tribunal, 18 October 1945
The work of drafting the indictment was divided up by the national delegations. The British worked on aggressive war; the other delegations were assigned the task of covering crimes against humanity and war crimes committed on theWestern Front (France) and theEastern Front (the Soviet Union). The United States delegation outlined the overall Nazi conspiracy and criminality of Nazi organizations.[74][75] The British and American delegations decided to work jointly in drafting the charges of conspiracy to wage aggressive war. On 17 September, the various delegations met to discuss the indictment.[76]
The charge ofconspiracy, absent from the charter, held together the wide array of charges and defendants[77] and was used to charge the top Nazi leaders, as well as bureaucrats who had never killed anyone or perhaps even directly ordered killing. It was also an end run on the charter's limits on charging crimes committed before the beginning of World War II.[78] Conspiracy charges were central to the cases against propagandists and industrialists: the former were charged with providing the ideological justification for war and other crimes, while the latter were accused of enabling Germany's war effort.[79] The charge, a brainchild ofWar Department lawyerMurray C. Bernays, and perhaps inspired by his previous work prosecutingsecurities fraud,[80][81] was spearheaded by the United States and less popular with the other delegations, particularly France.[82]
The problem of translating the indictment and evidence into the three official languages of the tribunal—English, French, and Russian—as well as German was severe due to the scale of the task and difficulty of recruiting interpreters, especially in the Soviet Union.[83] Vyshinsky demanded extensive corrections to the charges of crimes against peace, especially regarding the role of theGerman–Soviet pact in starting World War II.[84] Jackson also separated out an overall conspiracy charge from the other three charges, aiming that the American prosecution would cover the overall Nazi conspiracy while the other delegations would flesh out the details of Nazi crimes.[85] The division of labor, and the haste with which the indictment was prepared, resulted in duplication, imprecise language, and lack of attribution of specific charges to individual defendants.[86]
Some of the most prominent Nazis—Adolf Hitler,Heinrich Himmler, andJoseph Goebbels—had committed suicide and therefore could not be tried.[87][88] The prosecutors aimed to prosecute key leaders in German politics, business, and the military.[89] Most of the defendants had surrendered to the United States or United Kingdom.[90][50]
Although the list of defendants was finalized on 29 August,[97] as late as October, Jackson demanded the addition of new names, but was denied.[98] Of the 24 men indicted,Martin Bormann wastriedin absentia, as the Allies were unaware of his death; Krupp was too ill to stand trial; andRobert Ley had committed suicide before the start of the trial.[99] Former Nazis were allowed to serve as counsel[57] and by mid-November all defendants had lawyers. The defendants' lawyers jointly appealed to the court, claiming it did not have jurisdiction against the accused, but this motion was rejected. Defense lawyers saw themselves as acting on behalf of their clients and the German nation.[100]
Initially, the Americans had planned to try fourteen organizations and their leaders, but this was narrowed to six: theReich Cabinet, the Leadership Corps of theNazi Party, theGestapo, theSA, theSS and theSD, and theGeneral Staff andHigh Command of theGerman military (Wehrmacht).[101][102] The aim was to have these organizations declared criminal, so that their members could be tried expeditiously for membership in a criminal organization.[102] Senior American officials believed that convicting organizations was a good way of showing that not just the top German leaders were responsible for crimes, without condemning the entire German people.[103]
Over the summer, all of the national delegations struggled to gather evidence for the upcoming trial.[104] The American and British prosecutors focused on documentary evidence and affidavits rather than testimony from survivors. This strategy increased the credibility of their case, since survivor testimony was considered less reliable and more vulnerable to accusations of bias, but reduced public interest in the proceedings.[105][106] The American prosecution drew on reports of theOffice of Strategic Services, an American intelligence agency, and information provided by theYIVO Institute for Jewish Research and theAmerican Jewish Committee,[107] while the French prosecution presented many documents that it had obtained from theCenter of Contemporary Jewish Documentation.[108]The prosecution called 37 witnesses compared to the defense's 83, not including 19 defendants who testified on their own behalf.[106] The prosecution examined 110,000 captured German documents[52] and entered 4,600 into evidence,[109] along with 30 kilometres (19 mi) of film and 25,000 photographs.[110]
The charter allowed theadmissibility of any evidence deemed to haveprobative value, includingdepositions.[111] Because of the loose evidentiary rules, photographs, charts, maps, and films played an important role in making incredible crimes believable.[106] After the American prosecution submitted many documents at the beginning of the trial, the judges insisted that all of the evidence be read into the record, which slowed the trial.[112][113] The structure of the charges also caused delays as the same evidence ended up being read out multiple times, when it was relevant to both conspiracy and the other charges.[114]
The International Military Tribunal began trial on 20 November 1945,[115] after postponement requests from the Soviet prosecution, who wanted more time to prepare its case, were rejected.[116] All defendantspleaded not guilty.[117][118] Jackson made clear that the trial's purpose extended beyond convicting the defendants. Prosecutors wanted to assemble irrefutable evidence of Nazi crimes, establish individual responsibility and the crime of aggression in international law, provide a history lesson to the defeated Germans, delegitimize the traditional German elite,[119] and allow the Allies to distance themselves fromappeasement.[120] Jackson maintained that while the United States did "not seek to convict the whole German people of crime", neither did the trial "serve to absolve the whole German people except 21 men in the dock".[121] Nevertheless, defense lawyers (although not most of the defendants) often argued that the prosecution was trying to promoteGerman collective guilt and forcefully countered thisstrawman.[121] According to Priemel, the conspiracy charge "invited apologetic interpretations: narratives of absolute,totalitarian dictatorship, run by society's lunatic fringe, of which the Germans had been the first victims rather than agents, collaborators, andfellow travellers".[122] In contrast, the evidence presented on the Holocaust convinced some observers thatGermans must have been aware of this crime while it was ongoing.[123]
On 21 November, Jackson gave the opening speech for the prosecution.[124] He described the fact that the defeated Nazis received a trial as "one of the most significant tributes that Power has ever paid to Reason".[125] Focusing on aggressive war, which he described as the root of the other crimes, Jackson promoted anintentionalist view of the Nazi state and its overall criminal conspiracy. The speech was favorably received by the prosecution, the tribunal, the audience, historians, and even the defendants.[126]
Much of the American case focused on the development of the Nazi conspiracy before the outbreak of war.[78] The American prosecution became derailed during attempts to provide evidence on the first act of aggression,against Austria.[127] On 29 November, the prosecution was unprepared to continue presenting on theinvasion of Czechoslovakia, and instead screenedNazi Concentration and Prison Camps. The film, compiled from footage of theliberation of Nazi concentration camps, shocked both the defendants and the judges, who adjourned the trial.[128] Indiscriminate selection and disorganized presentation of documentary evidence without tying it to specific defendants hampered the American prosecutors' work on the conspiracy to commit crimes against humanity.[129] The Americans summonedEinsatzgruppen commanderOtto Ohlendorf, who testified about the murder of 80,000 people by those under his command, and SS generalErich von dem Bach-Zelewski, who admitted that Germananti-partisan warfare was little more than a cover for the mass murder of Jews.[130][131]
The British prosecution covered the charge of crimes against peace, which was largely redundant to the American conspiracy case.[77] On 4 December, Shawcross gave the opening speech, much of which had been written by Cambridge professorHersch Lauterpacht.[132][133] Unlike Jackson, Shawcross attempted to minimize the novelty of the aggression charges, elaborating its precursors in the conventions ofHague andGeneva, theLeague of Nations Covenant, theLocarno Treaty, and theKellogg–Briand Pact.[134][135][136] The British took four days to make their case,[137] with Maxwell Fyfe detailing treaties broken by Germany.[138] In mid-December the Americans switched to presenting the case against the indicted organizations,[139] while in January both the British and Americans presented evidence against individual defendants.[140] Besides the organizations mentioned in the indictment, American, and British prosecutors also mentioned the complicity of the GermanForeign Office,army, andnavy.[141]
From 17 January to 7 February 1946, France presented its charges and supporting evidence.[142] In contrast to the other prosecution teams, the French prosecution delved into Germany's development in the nineteenth century, arguing that it had diverged from the West due topan-Germanism and imperialism. They argued that Nazi ideology, which derived from these earlier ideas, was themens rea—criminal intent—of the crimes on trial.[143] The French prosecutors, more than their British or American counterparts, emphasized the complicity of many Germans;[144][78] they barely mentioned the charge of aggressive war and instead focused on forced labor, economic plunder, and massacres.[145][146] ProsecutorEdgar Faure grouped together various German policies, such as the annexation ofAlsace–Lorraine, under the label ofGermanization, which he argued was a crime against humanity.[147] Unlike the British and American prosecution strategies, which focused on using German documents, French prosecutors took the perspective of the victims, submitting postwar police reports.[148][141] Eleven witnesses, including victims of Nazi persecution, were called; resistance fighter andAuschwitz survivorMarie Claude Vaillant-Couturier testified about crimes she had witnessed.[149][148] The French charges of war crimes were accepted by the tribunal, except for the execution of hostages.[150] Due to the narrow definition of crimes against humanity in the charter, the only part of the Germanization charges accepted by the judges was thedeportation of Jews from France and other parts of Western Europe.[147]
On 8 February, the Soviet prosecution opened its case with a speech by Rudenko that covered all four prosecution charges, highlighting a wide variety of crimes committed by the German occupiers as part of their destructive and unprovoked invasion.[151][152] Rudenko tried to emphasize common ground with the other Allies while rejecting any similarity between Nazi and Soviet rule.[152] The next week, the Soviet prosecution producedFriedrich Paulus—a Germanfield marshal captured after theBattle of Stalingrad—as a witness and questioned him about the preparations for the invasion of the Soviet Union.[153] Paulus incriminated his former associates, pointing to Keitel, Jodl, and Göring as the defendants most responsible for the war.[154]
More so than other delegations, Soviet prosecutors showed the gruesome details of German atrocities, especially the death by starvation of 3 millionSoviet prisoners of war and several hundred thousandresidents of Leningrad.[129] Although Soviet prosecutors dealt most extensively with thesystematic murder of Jews in eastern Europe, at times they blurred the fate of Jews with that of other Soviet nationalities.[155] Although these aspects had already been covered by the American prosecution, Soviet prosecutors introduced new evidence fromExtraordinary State Commission reports and interrogations of senior enemy officers.[156]Lev Smirnov presented evidence on theLidice massacre in Czechoslovakia, adding that German invaders haddestroyed thousands of villages and murdered their inhabitants throughout eastern Europe.[157] The Soviet prosecution emphasized the racist aspect of policies such as the deportation of millions of civilians to Germany forforced labor,[146] the murder of children,[158] systematic looting of occupied territories, and theft or destruction ofcultural heritage.[159] The Soviet prosecution also attempted to fabricate German responsibility for theKatyn massacre, which had in fact been committed by theNKVD. Although Western prosecutors never publicly rejected the Katyn charge for fear of casting doubt on the entire proceedings, they were skeptical.[160] The defense presented evidence of Soviet responsibility,[161] and Katyn was not mentioned in the verdict.[162]
Inspired by the films shown by the American prosecution, the Soviet Union commissioned three films for the trial:The German Fascist Destruction of the Cultural Treasures of the Peoples of the USSR,Atrocities Committed by the German Fascist Invaders in the USSR, andThe German Fascist Destruction of Soviet Cities, using footage from Soviet filmmakers as well as shots from German newsreels.[163] The second included footage of the liberations ofMajdanek andAuschwitz and was considered even more disturbing than the American concentration camp film.[164] Soviet witnesses included several survivors of German crimes, including two civilians who lived through the siege of Leningrad, a peasant whose village was destroyed in anti-partisan warfare, a Red Army doctor who endured several prisoner-of-war camps[165] and two Holocaust survivors—Samuel Rajzman, a survivor ofTreblinka extermination camp, and poetAbraham Sutzkever, who described the murder of tens of thousands of Jews fromVilna.[141][166] The Soviet prosecution case was generally well received and presented compelling evidence for the suffering of the Soviet people and the Soviet contributions to victory.[167]
Hermann Göring under cross-examinationA member of the Soviet delegation addresses the tribunal.
From March to July 1946, the defense presented its counterarguments.[117] Before the prosecution finished, it was clear that their general case was proven, but it remained to determine the individual guilt of each defendant.[168] None of the defendants tried to assert that the Nazis' crimes had not occurred.[169] Some defendants denied involvement in certain crimes or implausibly claimed ignorance of them, especially the Final Solution.[170][171] A few defense lawyers inverted the arguments of the prosecution to assert that the Germans' authoritarian mindset and obedience to the state exonerated them from any personal guilt.[172] Most rejected that Germany had deviated from Western civilization, arguing that few Germans could have supported Hitler because Germany was a civilized country.[172]
The defendants tried to blame their crimes on Hitler, who was mentioned 1,200 times during the trial—more than the top five defendants combined. Other absent and dead men, including Himmler,Reinhard Heydrich,Adolf Eichmann, and Bormann, were also blamed.[173] To counter claims that conservative defendants had enabled theNazi rise to power, defense lawyers blamed theSocial Democratic Party of Germany, trade unions, and other countries that maintained diplomatic relations with Germany.[174] In contrast, most defendants avoided incriminating each other.[175] Most defendants argued their own insignificance within the Nazi system,[176][177] though Göring took the opposite approach, expecting to be executed but vindicated in the eyes of the German people.[176]
The charter did not recognize atu quoque defense—asking for exoneration on the grounds that the Allies had committed the same crimes with which the defendants were charged.[178] Although defense lawyers repeatedly equated theNuremberg Laws to legislation found in other countries, Nazi concentration camps to Allied detention facilities, and the deportation of Jews to theexpulsion of Germans, the judges rejected their arguments.[178]Alfred Seidl [de] repeatedly tried to disclose the secret protocols of the German–Soviet pact; although he was eventually successful, it was legally irrelevant and the judges rejected his attempt to bring up theTreaty of Versailles.[178][179] Six defendants were charged with theGerman invasion of Norway, and their lawyers argued that this invasion was undertaken to prevent aBritish invasion of that country; a cover-up prevented the defense from capitalizing on this argument.[109][180] Fleet admiralChester Nimitz testified that theUnited States Navy had also usedunrestricted submarine warfare againstJapanin the Pacific; Dönitz's counsel successfully argued that this meant that it could not be a crime.[181][182] The judges barred most evidence on Allied misdeeds from being heard in court.[183]
Many defense lawyers complained about various aspects of the trial procedure and attempted to discredit the entire proceedings.[170] In order to appease them, the defendants were allowed a free hand with their witnesses and a great deal of irrelevant testimony was heard.[184] The defendants' witnesses sometimes managed to exculpate them, but other witnesses—includingRudolf Höss, the former commandant of Auschwitz, andHans Bernd Gisevius, a member of theGerman resistance—bolstered the prosecution's case.[185] In the context of the brewingCold War—for example, in 1946Winston Churchill delivered theIron Curtain speech[109]—the trial became a means of condemning not only Germany but also the Soviet Union.[186]
On 31 August, closing arguments were presented.[187] Over the course of the trial, crimes against humanity and especially against Jews (who were mentioned as victims of Nazi atrocities far more than any other group) came to upstage the aggressive war charge.[188][189] In contrast to the opening prosecution statements, all eight closing statements highlighted the Holocaust; and the French and British prosecutors made this the main charge, as opposed to that of aggression. All prosecutors except the Americans mentioned the concept ofgenocide, which had been recently invented by the Polish-Jewish juristRaphael Lemkin.[190] British prosecutor Shawcross quoted from witness testimony about a murdered Jewish family fromDubno, Ukraine.[191] During the closing statements, most defendants disappointed the judges with lies and denial. Speer managed to give the impression of apologizing without assuming personal guilt or naming any victims other than the German people.[192] On 2 September, the court recessed; and the judges retreated into seclusion to decide the verdict and sentences, which had been under discussion since June. The verdict was drafted by British deputy judgeNorman Birkett. All eight judges participated in the deliberations, but the deputies could not vote.[193][194]
The International Military Tribunal agreed with the prosecution that aggression was the gravest charge, stating in its judgment that because "war is essentially an evil thing", "to initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole".[1][195] The work of the judges was made more difficult due to the broadness of the crimes listed in the Nuremberg Charter.[196] The judges did not attempt to define the crime of aggression[197] and did not mention the retroactivity of the charges in the verdict.[198] Despite the lingering doubts of some of the judges,[199][200] the official interpretation of the IMT held that all of the charges had a solid basis in customary international law and that the trial was procedurally fair.[201] The judges were aware that both the Allies and the Axis had planned or committed acts of aggression, writing the verdict carefully to avoid discrediting either the Allied governments or the tribunal.[202]
The judges ruled that there had been a premeditated conspiracy to commit crimes against peace, whose goals were "the disruption of the European order" and "the creation of aGreater Germany beyondthe frontiers of 1914".[195] Contrary to Jackson's argument that the conspiracy began with the founding of the Nazi Party in 1920, the verdict dated the planning of aggression to the 1937Hossbach Memorandum.[162][203] The conspiracy charge caused significant dissent on the bench; Donnedieu de Vabres wanted to scrap it. Through a compromise proposed by the British judges, the charge of conspiracy was narrowed to a conspiracy to wage aggressive war.[204][205][206] Only eight defendants were convicted on that charge, all of whom were also found guilty of crimes against peace.[207] All 22 defendants were charged with crimes against peace, and 12 were convicted.[208] The war crimes and crimes against humanity charges held up the best, with only two defendants charged on those grounds being acquitted.[209] The judges determined that crimes against humanity concerning German Jews before 1939 were not under the court's jurisdiction because the prosecution had not proven a connection to aggressive war.[210][211]
Newsreel of the sentencing
Four organizations were ruled to be criminal: the Leadership Corps of the Nazi Party, the SS, the Gestapo, and the SD, although some lower ranks and subgroups were excluded.[212][213] The verdict only allowed for individual criminal responsibility if willing membership and knowledge of the criminal purpose could be proved, complicatingdenazification efforts.[214] The SA, Reich Cabinet, General Staff and High Command were not ruled to be criminal organizations.[212] Although the Wehrmacht leadership was not considered an organization within the meaning of the charter,[212][215] misrepresentation of the verdict as an exoneration would become one of the foundations of theclean Wehrmacht myth.[216][217] The trial had nevertheless resulted in the coverage ofits systematic criminality in the German press.[218]
Sentences were debated at length by the judges. Twelve defendants were sentenced to death: Göring, Ribbentrop, Keitel, Kaltenbrunner, Rosenberg, Frank, Frick, Streicher, Sauckel, Jodl, Seyss-Inquart, and Bormann.[219][207] On 16 October,ten were hanged, with Göring killing himself the day before. Seven defendants (Hess, Funk, Raeder, Dönitz, Schirach, Speer, and Neurath) were sent toSpandau Prison to serve their sentences.[220] All three acquittals (Papen, Schacht, and Fritzsche) were based on a deadlock between the judges; these acquittals surprised observers. Despite being accused of the same crimes, Sauckel was sentenced to death, while Speer was given a prison sentence because the judges considered that he could reform.[221] Nikichenko released a dissent approved by Moscow that rejected all the acquittals, called for a death sentence for Hess, and convicted all the organizations.[213][222]
Initially, it was planned to hold a second international tribunal for German industrialists, but this was never held because of differences between the Allies.[223]Twelve military trials were convened solely by the United States in the same courtroom that had hosted the International Military Tribunal.[224] Pursuant toLaw No. 10 adopted by theAllied Control Council, United States forces arrested almost 100,000 Germans as war criminals.[225] TheOffice of Chief Counsel for War Crimes identified 2,500 major war criminals, of whom 177 were tried. Many of the worst offenders were not prosecuted, for logistical or financial reasons.[226]
These trials emphasized the crimes committed during the Holocaust.[234] The trials heard 1,300 witnesses, entered more than 30,000 documents into evidence, and generated 132,855 pages of transcripts, with the judgments totaling 3,828 pages.[235] Of 177 defendants, 142 were convicted and 25 sentenced to death;[236] the severity of sentencing was related to the defendant's proximity to mass murder.[237] Legal historianKevin Jon Heller argues that the trials' greatest achievement was "their inestimable contribution to the form and substance of international criminal law", which had been left underdeveloped by the IMT.[238]
Press at the International Military TribunalGermans readSüddeutsche Zeitung reporting the verdict, 1 October 1946
In all, 249 journalists were accredited to cover the IMT[52] and 61,854 visitor tickets were issued.[109] In France, the sentence for Rudolf Hess and acquittal of organizations were met with outrage from the media and especially from organizations for deportees and resistance fighters, as they were perceived as too lenient.[239] In the United Kingdom, although a variety of responses were reported, it was difficult to sustain interest in a long trial.[240] Where the prosecution was disappointed by some of the verdicts, the defense could take satisfaction.[241]
Many Germans at the time of the trials focused on finding food and shelter.[242][243] Despite this, a majority read press reports about the trial.[244] In a 1946 poll, 78 percent of Germans assessed the trial as fair, but four years later that had fallen to 38 percent, with 30 percent considering it unfair.[243][245] As time went on, more Germans considered the trials illegitimatevictor's justice and an imposition of collective guilt, which they rejected—instead considering themselves victims of the war.[246][247] As the Cold War began, the rapidly changing political environment began to affect the effectiveness of the trials.[248] The educational purpose of the Nuremberg Military Tribunals was a failure, in part because of the resistance to war crimes trials in German society, but also because of the United States Army's refusal to publish the trial record in German for fear it would undermine the fight against communism.[249]
The German churches, both Catholic and Protestant, were vocal proponents of amnesty.[250] The pardon of convicted war criminals also had cross-party support inWest Germany, which was established in 1949.[251] The Americans satisfied these wishes to bind West Germany to theWestern Bloc,[252] beginning early releases of Nuremberg Military Tribunal convicts in 1949.[253] In 1951,High CommissionerJohn J. McCloy overturned most of the sentences[254][255] and the last three prisoners, all convicted at theEinsatzgruppen trial, were released in 1958.[256][257] The German public took the early releases as confirmation of what they saw as the illegitimacy of the trials.[258] The IMT defendants required Soviet permission for release; Speer was not successful in obtaining early release, and Hess remained in prison until his death in 1987.[259] By the late 1950s, the West German consensus on release began to erode, due to greater openness inpolitical culture and new revelations of Nazi criminality, including the first trials of Nazi perpetrators in West German courts.[260]
The International Military Tribunal, and its charter, "marked the true beginning ofinternational criminal law".[2] The trial has met a mixed reception ranging from glorification to condemnation.[261] The reaction was initially predominantly negative, but has become more positive over time.[262]
The selective prosecution exclusively of the defeated Axis and hypocrisy of all four Allied powers has garnered the most persistent criticism. Such actions as the German–Soviet pact,[263][264] theexpulsion of millions of Germans from central and eastern Europe,[265] deportation of civilians for forced labor,[266] and violent suppression of anti-colonial uprisings would have been deemed illegal according to the definitions of international crimes in the Nuremberg charter.[267] Another controversy resulted from trying defendants for acts that were not criminal at the time,[268] particularly crimes against peace.[268][31] Equally novel but less controversial were crimes against humanity, the conspiracy charge, and criminal penalties on individuals for breaches of international law.[269] Besides these criticisms, the trials have been taken to task for the distortion that comes from fitting historical events into legal categories.[270]
The trials were the first use ofsimultaneous interpretation, which stimulated technical advances in translation methods.[279][280] The Palace of Justice houses a museum on the trial and the courtroom became a tourist attraction, drawing 13,138 visitors in 2005.[281] The IMT is one of the most well-studied trials in history, and it has also been the subject of an abundance of books and scholarly publications, along with motion pictures such asJudgment at Nuremberg (1961) andThe Memory of Justice (1976).[282][283]
Brüggemann, Jens (2018).Männer von Ehre?: die Wehrmachtgeneralität im Nürnberger Prozess 1945/46 : zur Entstehung einer Legende [Men of honor?: the Wehrmacht generals in the Nuremberg trial 1945/46: the emergence of a legend] (in German).Ferdinand Schöningh.ISBN978-3-506-79259-4.
Fleming, Michael (2022).In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Poland, the United Nations War Crimes Commission, and the Search for Justice. Cambridge University Press.ISBN978-1-009-11660-2.
Hirsch, Francine (2020).Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg: A New History of the International Military Tribunal after World War II. Oxford University Press.ISBN978-0-19-937795-4.
Mouralis, Guillaume (2019).Le moment Nuremberg: Le procès international, les lawyers et la question raciale [The Nuremberg moment: The international trial, the lawyers and the racial question] (in French).Presses de Sciences Po.ISBN978-2-7246-2422-9.
Musa, Shavana (2016). "The British and the Nuremberg Trial".British Influences on International Law, 1915–2015.Brill Nijhoff. pp. 367–386.ISBN978-90-04-28417-3.
Sayapin, Sergey (2014).The Crime of Aggression in International Criminal Law: Historical Development, Comparative Analysis and Present State.T.M.C. Asser Press.ISBN978-90-6704-927-6.
Sellars, Kirsten (2013).'Crimes Against Peace' and International Law. Cambridge University Press.ISBN978-1-107-02884-5.
Sharples, Caroline (2013). "Holocaust on Trial: Mass Observation and British Media Responses to the Nuremberg Tribunal, 1945–1946".Britain and the Holocaust: Remembering and Representing War and Genocide.Palgrave Macmillan UK. pp. 31–50.ISBN978-1-137-35077-0.
Consists of footage from German films documenting Nazi personalities and activities interwoven with film shot during the trials — including testimony and statements from defendants, prosecuting attorneys, judges, and witnesses. It also contains flashbacks of a variety of Nazi crimes against humanity.
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