Part 1: The Nuremberg Trials
https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/nuremberg-trials
Shortly after Adolf Hitler came into power in 1933, he and his Nazi government began implementing policies designed to persecute German-Jewish people and other perceived enemies of the Nazi state. By the end of WWII in 1945, the Hitler regime was responsible for the murder of some 6 million European Jews and 4-6 million non-Jews. 10-12 million people DEAD.
In 1942, Great Britain, the United States, France, and the Soviet Union created an Allied leadership group that determined the Nazi regime must be stopped, and high ranking Nazi officials must be executed. However, the United States believed that criminal trials were necessary which showed the crimes committed, the charges against each defendant, and that would deter any naysayers down the road from thinking that someone was not given due process for the crimes committed. The only precedent they had to work with was Confederate officer Henry Wirz who was charged with war crimes for mistreatment of Union officers in the Civil war, and the Turkish court martial case that punished those involved in Armenian Genocide in 1915-1916. Never had an international trial involving multiple countries with differing legal statutes and practices.
On August 8th, 1945, the London Charter International Military Tribunal was established, with law and procedure in place for the Nuremberg Trials. They outlined three categories of crimes: 1. crimes against peace (including planning, preparing, starting or waging wars of aggression or wars in violation of international agreements), 2. war crimes (including violations of customs or laws of war, including improper treatment of civilians and prisoners of war) and 3. crimes against humanity (including murder, enslavement or deportation of civilians or persecution on political, religious or racial grounds). The tribunal also decided that civilian officials as well as military officers could be accused of war crimes. The trial was held in the city of Nuremberg as it had a large building to hold the trial that also included a large prison area. As a little “sauce on the trial burger”, Nuremberg was also the site of many Nazi propaganda rallies, so meeting their fate where they previously regaled and celebrated their Nazi beliefs was some bittersweet irony.
There were multiple separate trials held, spanning from 1945-1949. Hitler and two of his top associates, Heinrich Himmler and Joseph Goebbels had allegedly committed suicide in the spring of 1945 before they could be brought to trial. The first trial was the Trial of Major War Criminals. There were prosecutors and defense attorneys according to British and American law, but the decisions and sentences were imposed by a tribunal (panel of judges) rather than a single judge and a jury. Each of the four Allied powers supplied two judges–a main judge and an alternate. Twenty-four individuals were indicted, along with six Nazi organizations determined to be criminal such as the state police and the Gestapo. One man was deemed medically unfit to stand trial, another man killed himself before the trial began. The defendants were allowed to choose their own lawyers. Most used the same defense: this trial is holding us to laws created after the crime was committed, and there was no parity in that the Germans were held to stricter guidelines than the Allied soldiers were. Important historical note: this was the first time that translation was used in a courtroom. Given the different languages spoken, they used telephone and headphone real time translation during the trial. The final verdict was guilty for all but 3 on trial. Twelve were given the death penalty. The rest were given lengthy to life term prison sentences. Ten died by hanging. Hitlers successor, Herman Goring, decided to take himself out with a cyanide pill the night before his scheduled execution.
Following the Trial of Major War Criminals, there were 12 additional trials held from 1946-1949. These proceedings were different from the first trial in that they were conducted before U.S. military tribunals rather than the international tribunal that decided the fate of the major Nazi leaders. The Doctors Trial from 1946-1947 had 23 defendants that were accused of crimes against humanity, including medical experiments on prisoners of war. The Judges Trial in 1947 involved 16 lawyers and judges that were charged with enabling the Nazi plan for “racial purity” by enacting eugenics laws of the Third Reich. The other trials dealt with German industrialists accused of using slave labor, high-ranking army officers accused of atrocities against prisoners of war; and SS officers accused of violence against concentration-camp inmates. Of the 185 people indicted in the subsequent Nuremberg trials, 12 defendants received death sentences, 8 others were given life in prison and an additional 77 people received varying prison terms.