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Assignment
What types of evidence did the allied prosecutors
bring against the Nazi leaders in the proceedings at Nuremberg?
Background
It had been agreed during the war, that those
responsible for the war and the atrocities committed during the war would
be held accountable for their actions afterwards. The Nuremberg International
Military Tribunal (1945-46) was the most famous of the many trials held after
the war. The authority of the tribunal derived from the London Agreement
of 8 August 1945 which established an international tribunal to conduct trials
of the major Axis war criminals whose offenses had no particular geographic
location. The tribunal was given the authority to find any individual guilty
of war crimes and to declare any group or organization to be criminal in
character.
Judges from Great Britain, France, the Soviet
Union and the United States tried the Nazi leaders. The first session
opened under the presidency of General I. Nikitchenko, the Soviet judge,
on 18 October 1945 in Berlin. After 20 November, all sessions of the
tribunal were held in Nürnberg under the presidency of the British judge,
Lord Justice Geoffrey Lawrence (later Baron Trevethin and
Oaksey).
Twenty-four former Nazi leaders were charged
with war crimes, and various groups, such as the Gestapo, were charged with
being criminal in character. The indictment lodged against the defendants
contained four counts: (1) crimes against peace (the waging of a war
of aggression in violation of international agreements); (2) crimes against
humanity (the Holocaust); (3) war crimes (violations of the rules of war);
and (4) "a common plan or conspiracy to commit" the criminal acts listed
in the three counts.
On 1 October 1946, the tribunal announced the
verdicts on twenty-two of the original defendants. (Robert Ley committed
suicide while in prison, and Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach's mental
condition prevented his trial.) Three of the defendants were acquitted
(Hjalmar Schacht, Franz von Papen and Hans Fritzsche). Four received sentences
of imprisonment ranging from ten to twenty years (Karl Dönitz, Baldur
von Schirach, Albert Speer and Konstantin von Neurath). Three received the
sentence of life imprisonment (Rudolf Hess, Walther Funk and Erich Raeder).
Twelve of the defendants were sentenced to be hanged (done on 16 October
1946): Hans Frank, Wilhelm Frick, Julius Streicher, Alfred Rosenberg,
Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Fritz Sauckel, Alfred Jodl,
Wilhelm Keitel and Arthur Seyss-Inquart. Martin Bormann was condemned
to death in absentia, and Hermann Göring committed suicide before he
could be executed.
In reaching these verdicts, the tribunal rejected
the various defenses offered by the defendants: (1) the contention
that only a state, and not an individual, could be found guilty of war crimes
(The tribunal held that crimes against international law are committed by
men.); (2) the argument that the trial and adjudication were ex post facto
(The tribunal responded that such acts as had been committed by the defendants
had long been regarded as
criminal.).
Another war tribunal, conducted (1946-47) in
Tokyo by eleven countries, tried and sentenced Japanese war criminals.
In Europe, 177 more former Nazis stood trial in twelve other proceedings
(not to mention the many who stood trial in various national settings), but
the entire process of exacting retribution by the late 1940s had become ensnarled
in the unfolding events of the Cold War.
Timeline
- 20 November 1945. International
Military Tribunal opened its work in Berlin.
- 1945, Marshal Petain and Pierre
Laval (shot) trial in France. Victor Quisling (shot) trial in
Norway.
- 1 October 1946, verdicts announced
in Nuremberg.
- 15 October 1946, Hermann Goering
committed suicide.
- 16 October 1946, ten Nazis
hanged.
- 12 November 1948, verdicts returned
in Japanese war trials.
- 23 December 1948, Tojo and six
other wartime leaders executed in Japan (eighteen others
imprisoned).
WWW sites
The documents for the trials are bulky,
including
the charter for the International Military Tribunal for Germany, 8 August 1945
and
the charter for the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, that began
January 19th, 1946. Another site of interest is a close English
translation of the IMTFE
judgement. The
Nuremberg Trials, from the American Experience series on PBS, is a
good place to begin as it gives the indictments, brief
biographies of the defendants and selected transcripts. It also
includes interviews, photos, and conections to sites for further
reading. The Nuremberg
War
Crimes Trial also has essentially all of the relevant
documentary
material, although it is not easily usable. Famous World Trials: Nuremberg Trial is another helpful site and
even includes quotes from some of the notable people involved. Harvard's
Nuremberg Trials Project has about one million pages of documents
on this topic. And if you read German, Die Nürnberger Prozesse,
1945-1949, has documents
describing the goals of Nazi politics and the sentencing at the
trials.
Some important holocaust resources
include:
the Cybrary of the Holocaust,
the Simon Wiesenthal Center,
the United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum, Yad
Vashem (the Holocaust memorial of the Jewish people), Auschwitz Alphabet
Excerpts (from the writings of concentration camp survivors about
daily
life in the camps), and the Holocaust
Center. For further study, A
Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust has links to many documents from the period, dozens of first hand
accounts of the Holocaust as well as links to many other helpful sites.
(Please be aware that not all of the links work.)
BBC Nuremburg Trials (video)
Two other interesting articles are Bulgaria and The
Fate of the Bulgarian Jews. (Not a single Bulgarian Jew was
deported to a
Nazi death camp).
Recommended Books
The most interesting document is the Final
Report to the Secretary of the Army on the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials under
Control Council Law no. 10 (by Telford Taylor, chief counsel for war
crimes, 1950).
Highly recommended are two movies about the
Holocaust: Night and Fog (1955), directed by Alain Resnais,
and Schindler's List (1993), directed by Steven
Spielberg.
A number of good books have appeared about the
Holocaust and the war crimes proceedings: Joseph Persico, Nuremberg: Infamy on Trial (1994); Telford Taylor, The ANatomy
of the Nuremberg Trials: A Personal Memoir (1992); Lucy Dawidowicz, The War against the Jews, rev. ed. (1986); Martin Hirsch, Norman Paech
and Gerhard Stuby, eds., Politik als Verbrechen: 40 Jahre
"Nürnberger Prozesse" (1986); Rudolf Kolchanov, In the Labyrinths
of Revenge-Seekers: The 40th Anniversary of the Trials of the Major
Nazi War Criminals in Nuremberg (1986); Casamayor, Nuremberg: 1945,
la guerre en procès (1985); Lucien Corosi, Il y a quarante
ans, Nuremberg: autopsie d'un procès raté (1985); Ann Tusa
and John Tusa, The Nuremberg Trial (1984); Bradley Smith, ed., The
American Road to Nuremberg: The Documentary Record, 1944-1945 (1982);
Werner Maser, A Nation on Trial (1979); Philip Piccigallo, The
Japanese on Trial: Allied War Crimes Operations in the East,
1945-1951 (1979); and Eugene Davidson, The Trial of the Germans:
An Account of the Twenty-Two Defendants before the International Military
Tribunal at Nuremberg (1966).
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