Nuremberg Trials

Nuremberg Trials, series of trials of major German war criminals held by the victorious Allies in World War II in Nuremberg between 1945 and 1949.

The first and best-known trial was conducted by the International Military Tribunal (IMT), composed of representatives of the four victorious allies —the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and France —against 24 high-ranking German and Austrian officials and commanders between October 1945 and October 1946. It was followed by 12 trials by the United States against sections of the military, political, and economic leadership of the Third Reich, between 1946 and 1949.

Following prolonged wartime deliberations, the four Allies gave the legal foundation for the IMT with the London Agreement of August 8, 1945. The court was composed of four judges (Sir Geoffrey Lawrence, Francis Biddle, Henri Donnedieu de Vabres, and Iona Nikitchenko) and four alternate judges (Sir Norman Birkett, John Parker, Robert Falco, and Alexander Volchkov) from each ally. It prosecuted major German war criminals, observing a mixture of Anglo-American and continental legal procedures. It pressed three types of charges: crimes against peace (planning and waging aggressive war), war crimes (violations of laws and customs of war), and crimes against humanity (persecution and mass killing of ethnic or religious groups).

The 24 individuals indicted by the IMT included most surviving key Nazis, such as Hermann Göring, Rudolf Hess, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Alfred Rosenberg, and Julius Streicher; top military commanders, including Wilhelm Keitel, Karl Dönitz, Erich Raeder, and Alfred Jodl; economic and political leaders, such as Baldur von Schirach and Albert Speer; and non-Nazi leaders considered to have assisted Hitler’s plans, including Franz von Papen and Hjalmar Schacht. The other defendants were Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Hans Frank, Wilhelm Frick, Walther Funk, Fritz Sauckel, Artur Seyss-Inquart, Konstantin von Neurath, and Hans Fritzsche. Martin Bormann was tried in absentia. Robert Ley and the industrialist Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach (see Krupp) were also indicted but did not stand trial—Ley committed suicide shortly before the trial was due to begin, and Krupp was deemed too infirm to participate. Also on trial were six organizations central to Nazi Germany: the leadership corps of the Nazi Party; its security organ, the SS (Schutzstaffel; protection squad); the SD (Sicherheitsdienst, or security service), the intelligence service within the SS; the Gestapo (Geheime Staatspolizei; secret state police); the Reich Cabinet; and the Army General Staff.

The IMT’s deliberations began on October 18, 1945, and concluded with the verdicts on October 1, 1946. The court acquitted three of the defendants but found the others guilty on one or more of the charges, rejecting the argument that they had simply followed orders and holding them individually responsible. It passed 12 death sentences and 7 prison terms ranging from 10 years to life. The court also condemned the Nazi Party leadership, the Gestapo, the SS, and the SD as criminal organizations.

Although the Allies had intended to hold further trials under IMT auspices, rising Cold War tensions thwarted such efforts. However, Law No. 10 promulgated by the Allied Control Council for Germany on December 20, 1945, authorized each power to try Nazi war criminals in its own occupation zone. Accordingly, the Americans conducted 12 further trials in Nuremberg between December 1946 and April 1949 against 185 defendants representing Nazi Germany’s legal, medical, industrial, and other elites, acquitting 35 and sentencing 24 to death and the others to differing prison terms.

The Nuremberg trials have been criticized as selective victors’ justice, and their impact on post-war Germany remains controversial. Nevertheless, they did provide extensive documentation of Nazi crimes, and, as a multinational effort to prosecute a criminal regime, the first trial in particular formed a watershed in international law, setting a precedent for similar subsequent efforts, such as the International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, established in the years 1993 and 1994 respectively.