NUREMBURG TRIAL

After the war, some of those responsible for crimes committed during the Holocaust were
brought to trial. Nuremberg, Germany, was chosen as a site for trials that took place in
1945 and 1946. Judges from the Allied powers—Great Britain, France, the Soviet Union,
and the United States—presided over the hearings of twenty-two major Nazi criminals.

Twelve prominent Nazis were sentenced to death. Most of the defendants admitted to the
crimes of which they were accused, although most claimed that they were simply following
the orders of a higher authority. Those individuals directly involved in the killing received
the most severe sentences. Other people who played key roles in the Holocaust, including
high-level government officials, and business executives who used concentration camp
inmates as forced laborers, received short prison sentences or no penalty at all.

The Nazis' highest authority, the person most to blame for the Holocaust, was missing at
the trials. Adolf Hitler had committed suicide in the final days of the war, as had several of
his closest aides. Many more criminals were never tried. Some fled Germany to live abroad,
including hundreds who came to the United States.

Trials of Nazis continued to take place both in Germany and many other countries. Simon
Wiesenthal, a Nazi-hunter, provided leads for war crimes investigators about Adolf
Eichmann. Eichmann, who had helped plan and carry out the deportations of millions of
Jews, was brought to trial in Israel. The testimony of hundreds of witnesses, many of them
survivors, was followed all over the world. Eichmann was found guilty and executed in
1962

KEY DATES
AUGUST 8, 1945
CHARTER OF THE INTERNATIONAL MILITARY TRIBUNAL (IMT) ANNOUNCED AT
LONDON CONFERENCE
The International Military Tribunal (IMT) is composed of judges from the United States,
Great Britain, France and the Soviet Union. Leading Nazi officials will be indicted and
placed on trial in Nuremberg, Germany, under Article 6 of the IMT's Charter for the
following crimes: (1) Conspiracy to commit charges 2, 3, and 4, which are listed here; (2)
crimes against peace—defined as participation in the planning and waging of a war of
aggression in violation of numerous international treaties; (3) war crimes—defined as
violations of the internationally agreed upon rules for waging war; and (4) crimes against
humanity—"namely, murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other
inhumane acts committed against any civilian population, before or during the war; or
persecution on political, racial, or religious grounds in execution of or in connection with
any crime within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal, whether or not in violation of domestic
law of the country where perpetrated."
OCTOBER 6, 1945
LEADING NAZI OFFICIALS INDICTED FOR WAR CRIMES
The four chief prosecutors of the International Military Tribunal (IMT)—Robert H. Jackson
(United States), Francois de Menthon (France), Roman A. Rudenko (Soviet Union), and Sir
Hartley Shawcross (Great Britain)—hand down indictments against 24 leading Nazi
officials. The indicted include Hermann Goering (Hitler's heir designate), Rudolf Hess
(deputy leader of the Nazi party), Joachim von Ribbentrop (foreign minister), Wilhelm
Keitel (head of the armed forces), Wilhelm Frick (minister of the interior), Ernst
Kaltenbrunner (head of security forces), Hans Frank (governor-general of occupied
Poland), Konstantin von Neurath (governor of Bohemia and Moravia), Erich Raeder (head
of the navy), Karl Doenitz (Raeder's successor), Alfred Jodl (armed forces command),
Alfred Rosenberg (minister for occupied eastern territories), Baldur von Schirach (head of
the Hitler Youth), Julius Streicher (radical Nazi antisemitic publisher), Fritz Sauckel (head
of forced-labor allocation), Albert Speer (armaments minister), and Arthur Seyss-Inquart
(commissioner for the occupied Netherlands). Martin Bormann (Hitler's adjutant) is to be
tried in absentia.
OCTOBER 1, 1946
VERDICT AT NUREMBERG
The International Military Tribunal (IMT) announces its verdicts. It imposes the death
sentence on 12 defendants (Goering, Ribbentrop, Keitel, Kaltenbrunner, Rosenberg, Frank,
Frick, Streicher, Sauckel, Jodl, SeyssInquart, and Bormann). Three are sentenced to life
imprisonment (Hess, economics minister Walther Funk, and Raeder). Four receive prison
terms ranging from 10 to 20 years (Doenitz, Schirach, Speer, and Neurath). The court
acquits three defendants: Hjalmar Schacht (economics minister), Franz von Papen (German
politician who played an important role in Hitler's appointment as chancellor), and Hans
Fritzsche (head of press and radio). The death sentences are carried out on October 16,
1946, with two exceptions: Goering committed suicide shortly before his scheduled
execution, and Bormann remained missing. The other 10 defendants are hanged, their
bodies cremated, and the ashes deposited in the Iser River. The seven major war criminals
sentenced to prison terms are remanded to the Spandau Prison in Berlin.

Case Study: The Nuremberg Trial

► The Nuremberg Trial was the first historical precedent for bringing to trial and
punishing the most dangerous war criminals. Twelve trials, involving over a hundred
defendants and several different courts, took place in Nuremberg from 1945-1949. The
most attention has focused on the first Nuremberg trial of twenty-one major war
criminals. Numerous of the eleven subsequent Nuremberg trials, however, involved
matter no less serious; and issues at least as interesting; as the Major War Criminals
Trial1. The Nuremberg war crimes trial echoed the widespread sense among the anti-
Nazi Allies in the second world war against Germany. From the beginning of the
conflict, revolting evidence of regular massacre, on an exceptional degree, poured out of
occupied Europe. In reply of such horrors, in the beginning of 1942 the Allied leaders
began to put together a common policy over several years of negotiation, when news
of wartime mayhem filled the Western news media. In October 1943, the leaders of the
Three Powers signed and published the “Declaration on the responsibility of the
Hitlerites for the atrocities committed” where it was stated that the guilty will be tried
on the spot by the peoples who had suffered violence at their hands2.

The document of the first years of the war highlighted interest mainly on the
responsibility of the Hitlerites for crimes against humanity and war crimes. The

reasons are apparent: the massacre committed by the Hitlerites in all the occupied
countries stirred up the deep indignation of the peoples, called for instant measures
for the punishment of the criminals3. Discussions intensified when the victory appeared
close in 1944. It was still on the way in 1945, when the Allied troops broke into
Germany itself and also when the vicious Allied aerial assault devastated German towns
and cities, turning them to debris. The Allied leaders rejected proposals for the summary
execution of Nazi leaders and eventually negotiated an agreement planned to
correspond a display of potentially inconsistent goals: the punishment of major Nazi
war criminals through an International Military Tribunal (IMT); the creation of an
trustworthy record of the dishonest nature of the National Socialist regime; and a swift
decision of the matter4. They decided to hold the trial in the ruined Bavarian city of
Nuremberg, chosen partly for its symbolic significance- Nuremberg had in the early
years been the heart of the Nazi movement. This year long trial of the “major war
criminals” became known as the Nuremberg Trial5.

► The Charter of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg (Nuremberg

Charter or IMT Charter), decided along with the London Agreement

on 8th August 1945 by the four triumphant powers of Second World War6, can be

1
Doug Linder, The Nuremberg Trials, jurist.law.pitt.edu, 2000
2
The Nuremberg Trial…., Vol. 1, pp. 17-18.
3
George Ginsburgs and V.N. Kudriavtsev, The Nuremberg Trial and International Law, (Dordrecht:
Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1990).
4
Stephan Landsman, Crimes of the Holocaust: The Law Confronts Hard Cases, (Philadelphia: University
of Pennsylvania Press, 2005).
5
Michael R. Marrus, The Nuremberg War Crimes Trial 1945-46: A Documentary History, (Boston:
Bedford Books, 1997).
6
Agreement for the Prosecution and Punishment of the Major War Criminals of the European Axis, the IMT Charter
is included as an appendix to the Agreement.
regarded as the birth certificate of the international criminal law. The Charter’s central
declaration was that crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity
demands individual responsibility under international law. For the first time, individuals
were held criminally liable under international law. Possibly the well-regarded passage
in the judgment of the International Military Tribunal observed on this: “Crimes against
international law are committed by men, not by abstract entities, and only by punishing
individuals who commit such crimes can the provisions of international law be
enforced”7.

The London Agreement concluded by the four victorious powers in 1945 provided for
the creation of an international military tribunal “for the trial of war criminals whose
offences have no particular geographical location”8. These major war criminal were to
be tried on the foundation of the Nuremberg Charter. War criminals whose crimes
could be localized to a specific country’s territory were to be prosecuted by the
respective countries. Allied occupation courts (Besatzungsgerichte) would have
jurisdiction over war crimes committed by Germans within the borders of the German
Reich9.

Crimes against peace are first among the crimes in Article 6 of the Nuremberg Charter.
These concern the planning, preparation and waging of a war of aggression. The Charter
considers infringement of the laws and customs of war punishable as war crimes.
While the criminalization of war crimes intends to protect the rights of foreign citizens,
crimes against humanity contain offence’s against one’s own citizens. Hence the
domestic field is also incorporated in international law. Crimes against humanity is
based on the suggestion that certain serious attacks on individuals put on an
international aspect when they are systematically aimed at a specific civilian population.
Genocide would be the imperative example of this new breed of crime, even though it
was mentioned neither in the Charter nor the judgment of the Nuremberg Tribunal.
The Charter specifically highlighted that the domestic legality of a crime did not prevent
its prosecution. Individual criminal responsibility did not depend on whether the act
infringed the laws of the country in which it took place. Hence it was reasonable that,
the offender’s official capacity did not block punishment as provided by Article 7 of
the Nuremberg Charter10.

The International Military Tribunal announced its judgment on 30th September and 1st
of October 1946. Either a spotlight or a weakness of the judgment rest in its explanation
of the criminality of wars of aggression, fundamentally derived from the Treaty
Providing for the Renunciation of War as an Instrument of National Policy

7
IMT judgment of 1st October 1946, in The Trial of German Major War Criminals, Proceedings of the International
Military Tribunal Sitting at Nuremberg, Germany, Part 22, p. 447.
8
London Agreement, Article 1.
9
Control Council Proclamation, No. 1, 30th August 1945.
10
Gerald Werle, Principles of International Criminal Law, (The Hague: T.M.C. Asser Press, 2005).
of 27th August 1928 (Kellogg-Briand Pact)11. On crimes against humanity, the Court
expressed that political adversaries of the Nazis had been murdered or imprisoned
even before the war, and in the process also mentioned to the singling out of the Jews.
But based on the wording of Article 6 (C) of the Nuremberg Charter (“in execution of
or in connection with any crime within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal”), the Court
required a connection between crimes against humanity and war crimes or wars of
aggression. Seldom this link could not be established for actions taking place before the
start of the war12.

► The triumphant powers’ course of action after the Second World War was
controversial in legal and political considerations13. The two essential oppositions to
the Nuremberg model questioned its political authority, on the one hand, and its legal
basis, on the other. The allegation of visitor’s justice was promoted above all by the
fact that no prosecutions for Allied war crimes ever occurred 14. Eventually questions
aroused whether the people bearing primarily responsibility on the Axis side before
the Court as they had started and waged an aggressive war- or only because they had
lost it. From, a legal perspective the judgment was criticized primarily for infringing
the prevention on retroactive punishment, a principle

essentially accepted by the Nuremberg Tribunal itself15.

Opinion remains divided as to whether all the crimes prosecuted before the
International Military Tribunal had already been criminal under international law at
the time they were committed16. Nevertheless, it is inevitable that punishment of war
crimes based on a secure basis in the law as it existed at the time they were committed.
In respect of crimes against humanity, it was at least acknowledged that the diverse
crimes, such as murder, enslavement, torture, and rape, were illegal in practically all legal
systems at the time. Hence it was not the criminality of the acts themselves that
presented a objective for attack, but their prosecution under the legal heading of crimes
against humanity and their direct criminalization under international law17.

Crimes against peace faced the strongest oppositions18. Whereas the illegality of
aggressive war under international law was justified firmly by the Court, the step from
illegality to criminalization would have called for a stronger basis. The Court simply

11
See; www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/imt/kbpact.htm>.
12
. Gerald Werle, Principles of International Criminal Law, (The Hague: T.M.C. Asser Press, 2005)
13
See M.C. Bassiouni, Introduction to International Criminal Law, 2003, pp. 404.
14
See M.C. Bassiouni, International Criminal Law, Vol. 3, 2nd edition, 1999, p. 31 and p. 45.
15
See K. Ipsen, Volkerrecht, 5th edition, 2004, 42 marginal no. 22.
16
See M.C. Bassiouni, Introduction to International Criminal Law, 2003, pp. 408.
17
Gerald Werle, Principles of International Criminal Law, (The Hague: T.M.C. Asser Press, 2005).
18
See K. Kittichaisaree, International Criminal Law, 2001, p. 44.
stated: “In the opinion of the Tribunal, the solemn renunciation of war as an instrument
of national policy necessarily involved the proposition that such a
war was illegal in international law; and that those who planned and waged such a
war, with its inevitable and terrible consequences, were committing a crime in so

doing”19.

► It can at least be presented, in support of this conclusion , that serious breaches

of the international laws of war had usually been considered criminal without the
existence of any utter declaration of criminality, and that therefore waging an aggressive
war also was criminal because of its illegality under international law20.

In the following stages, the principles applied and developed by the Nuremberg Tribunal
were constantly confirmed to be part of international law. Therefore, the question
whether Nuremberg merely established existing law or created new law is of interest
today only to the historian of international law. As far as the possible breach of the
prevention on retroactivity is concerned, from today’s point of view it is agreed that
the principle of non-retroactivity was not intended to defend from punishment abuses
of power that defy international law21.

Today it is certain that the Nuremberg Principles are steadily established as customary
international law. Nuremberg achieved what had failed after the First World War. The
criminality of the most terrible infringement of international law

was from now on a concrete part of the international legal system22.

19
IMT judgment of 1st October 1946, in The Trial of German Major War Criminals, Proceedings of the
International Military Tribunal Sitting at Nuremberg, Germany, Part 22, p. 445.
20
See Marginal Nos. 1161 et seq.
21
G. Werle, Neue Juristische Wochenschrift, 2001, pp. 3001 et seq.
22
Gerald Werle, Principles of International Criminal Law, (The Hague: T.M.C. Asser Press, 2005).