#nurembergtrials

[whencyclopedia]

Nuremberg Trials

The Nuremberg trials (1945-6), held in Nürnberg (Nuremberg), Germany, were a series of trials involving the senior surviving Nazis to hold them accountable for waging war and committing war crimes and crimes against humanity during the Second World War (1939-45). 22 Nazis were tried, with 19 found guilty and sentenced to either death by hanging or lengthy prison terms.

The first Nuremberg trials were conducted from November 1945 to October 1946, and then, a second phase, which involved a much larger number of defendants, was conducted from November 1946 to April 1949. The Nuremberg trials were the first in history where the victors in a war sought to make senior figures from the losing side accountable for their actions. The trials were filmed and contributed greatly to our understanding of how WWII was conducted and revealed both the irrefutable evidence for and enormous scale of such atrocities as the Holocaust. The first month of the trials, the initial proceedings only, were hosted in the Supreme Court Building in Berlin, but they moved on 20 November to the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg. The Palace of Justice was selected because it had been the heart of Nazi show trials against enemies of the Third Reich, the city was the home of the Nuremberg Rally, the infamous annual Nazi Party congress, and the complex had the practical advantage of an adjoining prison where the defendants were detained.

The International Military Tribunal

At the close of WWII, the victorious Allies of France, Britain, the United States, and the USSR, as agreed by their respective leaders at a conference in Moscow back in October 1943, jointly formed an International Military Tribunal (IMT) to bring German Nazi war criminals to justice. There were some calls to have judges from neutral nations head the IMT, but the allied leaders were determined to be directly involved in getting their pound of flesh. The idea of the trials was supported by a number of other nations besides the four main powers.

The panel that would decide the fate of the defendants brought before the IMT consisted of one judge and one prosecutor from each of the four nations mentioned above. The judging panel was presided over by the British judge Lord Justice Geoffrey Lawrence, described by one American lawyer as "like God...Hollywood would have cast him" (MacDonald, 23). The chief Soviet judge was I. T. Nikitchenko, the French lead judge was Henri Donnedieu de Vabres, and the US judge was Francis B. Biddle. The legal proceedings followed the common law practice applied in the United States and Britain. Translators worked in the courtroom, and everyone present had access to a set of headphones. There was a large screen to show the court relevant film clips and statistical information. 250 journalists attended the court sessions, and the whole proceedings were filmed and sound recorded.

Nuremberg Trials Judges

U.S. Army (CC BY-NC-SA)

In the closing stages of the war, Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945), and Heinrich Himmler (1900-1945) had all committed suicide, but there remained 24 senior Nazi figures whom the Allies were determined to bring to justice. The group was selected not only for their individual roles but also as representatives of particular Nazi institutions. Before the trials could begin, Robert Ley (1890-1945), head of the German Labour Front, committed suicide, and Gustav Krupp (1870-1950), an industrialist who had used forced labour, was considered too physically frail to stand trial. The 22 remaining defendants faced four charges, as expressed in the Oxford Companion to World War II, they were:

Count 1: Contributing to a common plan or conspiracy to wage war

Count 2: Crimes against peace

Count 3: War crimes (e.g. violations of the Geneva Convention such as the abuse and murder of prisoners of war, use of prisoners for labour, destruction of private property, and devastation of property and places with no military justification)

Count 4: Crimes against humanity (e.g. the murder of civilian populations, use of slave labour, the forced deportation of civilians, and the persecution of specific social, political, religious, and racial groups)

Counts 1 and 2 proved problematic to define, and therefore it was difficult to find the defendants either innocent or guilty of them. This is hardly surprising considering the debate amongst historians ever since as to why and how WWII started and how far one should go back exactly in order to discover the causes of WWII, causes which could be attributed in some cases to both the victors and losers. The court essentially considered counts 1 and 2 as involving actions such as breaking international treaties and invading and occupying free countries. Much easier to establish were cases of counts 3 and 4, although even here there was the added complication that the victors had themselves been guilty of what would today be called war crimes, for example, the Allied bombing of Germany, submarine attacks on unarmed vessels, and the Katyn Forest massacre of Polish prisoners of war by USSR forces. Certain facts were taken as given, such as that Hitler had fully intended to start a world war. In addition, such Nazi organisations as the Gestapo (secret police), the SS (Schutzstaffel), and SA (Sturmabteilung) were condemned as criminal organisations.

Palace of Justice, Nuremberg

US Army (Public Domain)

The judges not only benefitted from the cross-examination of the defendants but also the testimony of around 360 witnesses (including both victims of and members of the Nazi regime) and a huge quantity of incriminating documents, official and otherwise, including indisputable photographs, sound recordings, and films, such as those taken at concentration and death camps. As noted by Dr Robert Kempner, a lawyer who had fled the Nazi regime:

One of the biggest helps to us was the German bureaucratic sense – they kept everything and they even made publications and films and lot of material had been discovered by our Allied search teams. Some of the people like General Governor Frank of Poland was so anxious to show his friend Hitler after the war what he has done that he kept diaries, volumes and volumes and volumes. In fact he had written his own indictment.

(Holmes, 593)

It is important to note, however, that the documentation for Nuremberg was compiled in order to support the legal case that the defendants were guilty of one or more of the four counts (and not to create a comprehensive reconstruction of past events as, say, a historian would do). There was, too, a degree of negotiation between the various national judges regarding particular defendants – the USSR judge, for example, wanted Rudolf Hess hanged while his fellow judges preferred a prison sentence – but there was a conscious effort on all parties to deliberate with as much fairness as possible given the seriousness of the trials and the world's scrutiny of them. To this end, the defendants were collectively represented by a legal counsel, Otto Kranzenbühler, and permitted individual lawyers to present their defence.

Camp Guard Giving Evidence at Nuremberg

Imperial War Museums (CC BY-NC-SA)

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[tvrundownusa]

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[myberndpulch]

✌Hans Frank: The "Butcher of Poland" and His Legacy

Hans Frank remains one of the most notorious figures of Nazi Germany. As the Governor-General of occupied Poland during World War II, he played a pivotal role in orchestrating atrocities against millions, particularly in the Jewish Holocaust. This article examines Frank’s life, his actions during the war, his trial at Nuremberg, and modern perspectives on his legacy, including commentary from…

[goku20193]

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[spanky606]

@Regran_ed from @freedom_faction - Thoughts? Concerns are mounting among scientists that the recent implementation of #SB277 making vaccinations mandatory law in #California for men, women and children is a chilling step towards universal compulsory vaccination. Coupled with the fact governments and multi-national pharmaceutical companies are being prosecuted and convicted over poorly-tested and administered vaccines, suggests a crisis is coming. Vaccine activists are citing the notorious post #SecondWorldWar #NurembergTrials in which #Nazi doctors were convicted of forced experiments on humans. Fears are that seemingly once benign governments are now resorting to forcing medication into the bodies of the unwilling masses and their children without their consent. A little recent history … Here is a short video discussing the ethical questions raised by many concerned parents during the debates leading up to the implementation of SB277 in California. The focus here is the concerns of these educated parents who were very aware of the possibilities of vaccine damage, wanting to know who gets to decide if the (possible) gains outweigh the (known) risks … Vaccines are scientifically proven to have side-effects ranging from mild to catastrophic. These may include anything from a mild rash, a compromised immune system, sterility, cognitive dysfunction (brain damage), paralysis, cancer, to … death and many more “proven” issues not mentioned here. We are constantly being told by the healthcare personnel we trust that the chance of vaccine damage is “Less than one in a million”, yet statistics prove over and over again that this is a totally erroneous and massively understated number, with the actual occurrences of harm caused by vaccines being massively higher, and in fact … very common. 🖐🏾More in comments👇🏾#GlobalHealthSecurityAgenda - #regrann https://www.instagram.com/p/BqSeCbEHfe7/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=ogmz3z4pdb6c

[stadtstoff]

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[legacylife365]

Nothing should ever be mandated, especially jabs that are killing people! Many countries have already banned these death shots! #stopthemandate #crimesagainsthumanity #insleesucks #NCSWIC #nuremberg #nurembergcode #nurembergtrials https://www.instagram.com/p/CTFlljbJYHE/?utm_medium=tumblr

[genolexis]

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[syndromeblue-blog]

This was a #greatread - “Parting Words” 9 lessons for a remarkable life written by Benjamin “Benny” Ferencz. He will be 101 years old this March. A Jewish immigrant, WWII soldier and a lawyer. He was an investigator of Nazi war crimes after World War II and the chief prosecutor for the United States Army at the Einsatzgruppen Trial, one of the 12 military trials held by the U.S. authorities at Nuremberg, Germany. Later, he became an advocate of the establishment of an international rule of law and of an International Criminal Court. Here he shares his extraordinary story, alongside nine treasured lessons. I got this book a week ago today. Read it every day. It’s definitely a book I will go back to read again in the near future. #book #greatreads #reading #author #books #booknerd #booklover #bookcommunity #bookaddict #booksbooksbooks #benjaminferencz #nueremberg #nurembergtrials #warcrimes #positivevibes #bookvibes #readingvibes #foodforthebrain #positivewaves #metalhobbit (at Birmingham, United Kingdom) https://www.instagram.com/p/CJv4ZbmJ6rW/?igshid=xwdtsv4uab60

[mj1982mjha]

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[penandswordbooks]

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[goku20193]

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[picnotesknowledge]

The Nuremberg Trials is the name of two sets of trials held responsible for the genocide committed during World War II, in which Nazi Germany, guided by some local collaborators, planned and systematically carried out the murder of some six-million European Jews: http://bit.ly/The_Nuremberg_Trial

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[genolexis]

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