Nuremberg Trials: 1945 trial at nuremberg, nuremberg infamy on trial, nuremberg war crime trial

Coordinates: 49°27.2603′N 11°02.9103′E / 49.4543383°N 11.048505°E The Nuremberg trials were a series of trials, or tribunals, most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of Nazi Germany after its defeat in World War II. The trials were held in the city of Nuremberg, Germany, from 1945 to 1946, at the Palace of Justice. The first and best known of these trials was the Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal (IMT), which tried 22 of the most important captured leaders of Nazi Germany. It was held from 21 November 1945, to 1 October 1946. The second set of trials of lesser war criminals was conducted under Control Council Law No. 10 at the U.S. Nuremberg Military Tribunals (NMT); among them included the Doctors' Trial and the Judges' Trial. This article primarily deals with the IMT; see the Subsequent Nuremberg Trials for details on those trials.

Origin

British War Cabinet documents, released on 2 January 2006, have shown that as early as December 1944, the Cabinet had discussed their policy for the punishment of the leading Nazis if captured. British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill had then advocated a policy of summary execution in some circumstances with the use of an Act of Attainder to circumvent legal obstacles, and was only dissuaded from this by talks with U.S. leaders later in the war. In late 1943, during the Tripartite Dinner Meeting at the Tehran Conference, the Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin, proposed executing 50,000–100,000 German staff officers. U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, aghast, sarcastically joked that perhaps 49,000 would do. Churchill denounced the idea of "the cold blooded execution of soldiers who fought for their country." However, he also stated that war criminals must pay for their crimes and that in accordance with the Moscow Document which he himself had written, they should be tried at the places where the crimes were committed. Churchill was vigorously opposed to executions "for political purposes."^[1]^[2]

U.S. Treasury Secretary, Henry Morgenthau, Jr., suggested a plan for the total denazification of Germany; this was known as the Morgenthau Plan. The plan advocated the forced de-industrialization of Germany. Roosevelt initially supported this plan, and managed to convince Churchill to support it in a less drastic form. Later, details were leaked to the public, generating widespread protest. Roosevelt, seeing strong public disapproval, abandoned the plan, but did not proceed to adopt support for another position on the matter. The demise of the Morgenthau Plan created the need for an alternative method of dealing with the Nazi leadership. The plan for the "Trial of European War Criminals" was drafted by Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson and the War Department. Roosevelt died in April 1945. The new president, Harry S. Truman, gave strong approval for a judicial process. After a series of negotiations between the U.S., Britain, the Soviet Union, and France, details of the trial were worked out. The trials were set to commence on 20 November 1945, in the city of Nuremberg.

Creation of the courts

On January 14, 1942, representatives from the nine occupied countries met in London to draft the Inter-Allied Resolution on German War Crimes. At the meetings in Tehran (1943), Yalta (1945) and Potsdam (1945), the three major wartime powers, the United States, the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom, agreed on the format of punishment for those responsible for war crimes during World War II. France was also awarded a place on the tribunal.

The legal basis for the trial was established by the London Charter, issued on 8 August 1945, which restricted the trial to "punishment of the major war criminals of the European Axis countries." Some 200 German war crimes defendants were tried at Nuremberg, and 1,600 others were tried under the traditional channels of military justice. The legal basis for the jurisdiction of the court was that defined by the Instrument of Surrender of Germany, political authority for Germany had been transferred to the Allied Control Council, which having sovereign power over Germany could choose to punish violations of international law and the laws of war. Because the court was limited to violations of the laws of war, it did not have jurisdiction over crimes that took place before the outbreak of war on 3 September 1939.

Allied war crimes

The war crimes tribunal tried and punished personnel only from Axis countries. Accusations arose claiming victor's justice, since no war crimes by the Allies were heard. It is, however, usual that the armed forces of a civilized country^[3] issue their forces with detailed guidance on what is and is not permitted under their military code. These are drafted to include any international treaty obligations and the customary laws of war. For example, at the trial of Otto Skorzeny, his defence was in part based on the Field Manual published by the War Department of the United States Army, on 1 October 1940, and the American Soldiers' Handbook.^[4] If a member of the armed forces breaks their own military code then they can expect to face a court martial. When members of the Allied armed forces broke their military codes, they could be and were tried, as, for example, at the Biscari Massacre trials.

However, General Chuck Yeager writes in his autobiography that some air corps missions were probably war crimes, (specifically, the 'shoot anything that moves' missions in the German countryside) but he, and other pilots, went on the missions in order to avoid court martial for disobeying orders. He also said he hoped the allies won the war, otherwise they might be tried for war crimes.^[5]

The unconditional surrender of the Axis powers was unusual and led directly to the formation of the international tribunals. Usually, international wars end conditionally and the treatment of suspected war criminals makes up part of the peace treaty. In most cases those who are not prisoners of war are tried under their own judicial system if they are suspected of committing war crimes – as happened to some Finns at the end of the concurrent Finnish-Soviet Continuation War. In restricting the international tribunal to trying suspected Axis war crimes, the Allies were acting within normal international law.

Location

The Soviet Union had wanted the trials to take place in Berlin, but Nuremberg was chosen as the site for the trials for specific reasons:

It was also agreed that France would become the permanent seat of the IMT and that the first trial (several were planned) would take place in Nuremberg.

Participants

Each of the four countries provided one judge and an alternate, as well as the prosecutors.

Judges

The chief prosecutors

Assisting Jackson was the lawyer Telford Taylor and a young US Army translator named Richard Sonnenfeldt. Assisting Shawcross were Major Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe and Sir John Wheeler-Bennett. Mervyn Griffith-Jones, later to become famous as the chief prosecutor in the Lady Chatterley's Lover obscenity trial, was also on Shawcross's team. Shawcross also recruited a young barrister, Anthony Marreco, who was the son of a friend of his, to help the British team with the heavy workload. Robert Falco was an experienced judge who had tried many in court in France.

Defense Counsel

Each defendant was provided with his own defense counsel; the majority of defense attorneys were German lawyers.

The main trial

The International Military Tribunal was opened on 18 October 1945, in the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg. The first session was presided over by the Soviet judge, Nikitchenko. The prosecution entered indictments against 24 major war criminals and six criminal organizations - the leadership of the Nazi party, the Schutzstaffel (SS) and Sicherheitsdienst (SD), the Gestapo, the Sturmabteilung (SA) and the High Command of the German armed forces (OKW).

Throughout the trials, specifically between January and July 1946, the defendants and a number of witnesses were interviewed by American psychiatrist Leon Goldensohn. His notes detailing the demeanour and personality of the defendants survive.

The death sentences were carried out 16 October 1946 by hanging using the standard drop method instead of long drop.^[29]^[30] The executioner was John C. Woods. The bodies were brought to Dachau and burned (the final use of the crematories there) with the ashes then scattered into a river.^{[citation needed]} The French judges suggested the use of a firing squad for the military condemned, as is standard for military courts-martial, but this was opposed by Biddle and the Soviet judges. These argued that the military officers had violated their military ethos and were not worthy of the firing squad, which was considered to be more dignified.^{[citation needed]} The prisoners sentenced to incarceration were transferred to Spandau Prison in 1947.

Of the twelve defendants sentenced to death by hanging, two were not hanged: Hermann Göring committed suicide the night before the execution and Martin Bormann was not present when convicted. The remaining ten defendants sentenced to death were hanged.

The definition of what constitutes a war crime is described by the Nuremberg Principles, a set of guidelines document which was created as a result of the trial. The medical experiments conducted by German doctors and prosecuted in the so-called Doctors' Trial led to the creation of the Nuremberg Code to control future trials involving human subjects, a set of research ethics principles for human experimentation.

Subsidiary and related trials

Assessment

In 1945 the idea of an International Military Tribunal was unprecedented. Creating a forum to legitimately try enemy prisoners under a fair legal system had never been attempted and many questioned whether World War II was the time to try it.^{[citation needed]} The governments of the Allies and France believed that a trial, following an established legal system, was a better option than military execution without due process. Consequently, the IMT was formed to try Nazi war criminals.

Although the IMT had its flaws, it at least provided the Nazi defendants with a modicum of justice by virtue of the simple fact that they were allowed a trial. The Allies overcame the urge to indiscriminately execute every prisoner they took, and instead decided to subject them to the rule of law.

Legacy

The creation of the IMT was followed by trials of lesser Nazi officials, trials of Nazi doctors, who performed horrifying experiments on people in prison camps. It served as the model for the International Military Tribunal for the Far East which tried Japanese officials for crimes against peace and against humanity. It also served as the model for the Eichmann trial and for present-day courts at The Hague, for trying crimes committed during the Balkan wars of the early 1990s, and at Arusha, for trying the people responsible for the genocide in Rwanda.

The Nuremberg trials had a great influence on the development of international criminal law. The Conclusions of the Nuremberg trials served as models for:

The International Law Commission, acting on the request of the United Nations General Assembly, produced in 1950 the report Principles of International Law Recognized in the Charter of the Nürnberg Tribunal and in the Judgement of the Tribunal (Yearbook of the International Law Commission, 1950, vol. II^[31]). See Nuremberg Principles.

The influence of the tribunal can also be seen in the proposals for a permanent international criminal court, and the drafting of international criminal codes, later prepared by the International Law Commission.

Establishment of a permanent International Criminal Court

The Nuremberg trials initiated a movement for the prompt establishment of a permanent international criminal court, eventually leading over fifty years later to the adoption of the Statute of the International Criminal Court.

Criticism

Critics^[32] of the Nuremberg trials argued that the charges against the defendants were only defined as "crimes" after they were committed and that therefore the trial was invalid as a form of "victors' justice".^[33] As Biddiss^[34] noted "...the Nuremberg Trial continues to haunt us....It is a question also of the weaknesses and strengths of the proceedings themselves. The undoubted flaws rightly continue to trouble the thoughtful."^[35]^[36]

Chief Justice of the United States Harlan Fiske Stone called the Nuremberg trials a fraud. "(Chief US prosecutor) Jackson is away conducting his high-grade lynching party in Nuremberg," he wrote. "I don't mind what he does to the Nazis, but I hate to see the pretense that he is running a court and proceeding according to common law. This is a little too sanctimonious a fraud to meet my old-fashioned ideas."^[37]

Associate Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas charged that the Allies were guilty of "substituting power for principle" at Nuremberg. "I thought at the time and still think that the Nuremberg trials were unprincipled," he wrote. "Law was created ex post facto to suit the passion and clamor of the time."^[38]

However, as described above, the unconditional surrender of the Axis powers was unusual and led directly to the formation of the international tribunals. In most cases those who are not prisoners of war are tried under their own judicial system if they are suspected of committing war crimes; in restricting the international tribunal to trying suspected Axis war crimes, the Allies were acting within normal international law.

Additionally, many commentators felt the Nuremberg Trials represented a step forward in extending fairness to the vanquished by requiring that actual criminal misdeeds be proved before punishment could ensue; including some of the defendants and their legal team:

Legitimacy

One criticism that was made of the IMT was that some treaties were not binding on the Axis powers because they were not signatories. This was addressed in the judgment relating to war crimes and crimes against humanity^[51] contains an expansion of customary law "the Convention Hague 1907 expressly stated that it was an attempt 'to revise the general laws and customs of war,' which it thus recognised to be then existing, but by 1939 these rules laid down in the Convention were recognised by all civilised nations, and were regarded as being declaratory of the laws and customs of war which are referred to in Article 6 (b) of the [London] Charter." The implication under international law is that if enough countries have signed up to a treaty, and that treaty has been in effect for a reasonable period of time, then it can be interpreted as binding on all nations not just those who signed the original treaty. This is a highly controversial aspect of international law, one that is still actively debated in international legal journals.

But the customary law of war exists, and has existed, since time immemorial; the use of treaty to codify what is allowed and what is prohibited is merely its modern expression; just as the common law in the English-speaking nations has forbidden murder, under pain of death, since its inception, without a word on the statute-books proscribing murder in many of the common law countries up to the present day. The idea that there are certain expectations of those practicing the profession of arms among the civilized nations has been ingrained in many cultures—including those of Europe, East Asia (c.f. bushido, the warrior code of Japan), the Middle East (c.f. Saladin, the Arabian/Islamic exemplar of knightly virtue, respected and honored across the battle-lines by the Crusaders), and other civilizations. In particular, the culture of Europe gave rise to the concept of chivalry, the code of honor regulating the conduct of knights, men-at-arms, and in later days, in more modern forms, soldiers. Traditionally, in Europe and elsewhere, the obligation of the warrior is to levy war upon all those who bear arms against him, his brothers-in-arms, his commander, and his nation, using whatever means at his disposal are necessary and honorable for the task, and not using those which are dishonorable or perfidious, but in so doing, to save and to defend the innocent, the weak, and the helpless; to bring succor to the wounded, comfort to the dying; to spare from the rigors of war those who do not present a threat, not bearing arms against him; to give quarter, and to treat with humanity and military dignity the enemy soldier who has yielded, or is incapacitated; and, above all, to protect women and children from the sword.

The idea that a warrior owes a duty not just to his nation, or his army, but also to his common humanity is a concept as old as civilization itself is. Over the millennia, civilization has remembered with respect those warriors who were courageous in battle and merciful to those they defeated, regardless of whose banner under which they fought,^[52] while history regards with infamy those warriors, regardless of their military success, who willingly discarded the very honor and respect that they may have earned in battle through their atrocities committed upon civilians or cruelties visited upon vanquished foes. No warrior has been regarded as a man of courage for slaughtering of the weak or innocent, for his pillages or sacks, or for brutalities and barbarities he visited upon his foes; therein lies no honor or glory, only senseless cruelty. This indicates that just as the law against murder in the common-law nations is established not by statute, but by history, custom, the human condition, and by being immanent in Nature, so too is the law of war, and so too has it always been, whether its violation is explicitly prohibited by treaty or not.

Nuremberg Trials

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