,Nürnberg: Stadt der Menschenrechte’ (City of Human Rights)
The Nuremberg Trials (from chapter 12, section 3 The Allies and the Nazi Legacy, AS text book)
When concentration camps such as Auschwitz were opened at the end of the war, the pictures of
horror that were broadcast to the world shocked and outraged the public. Yet, the motivation of
the victors when they set up an International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg was punishment of
the Nazi leaders rather than revenge. This military tribunal was a completely new concept and
there were no real existing international laws. This has caused a lot of controversy on the validity
and justification of these trials with legal and historical experts to this day (although over the years
the precedent has been used for other cases, eg Milosevic at the Hague).
KEY QUESTION – Were the Nuremberg Trials more like a ‘show trial’?
The court, made up of judges from the four Allies, was to conduct individual trials of the Nazis on
four counts:
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


war crimes
crimes against peace
crimes against humanity, for example the mass murder of Jews
conspiring to commit the crimes in the first three counts
KEY DATE – Nuremberg Trials began: 20 November 1945
The trials that started on 20 November 1945 indicted 22 of the leading members of the Nazi
regime and also six organisations: the Nazi Party, the Gestapo, the SS, the SA, the SD, and the
leadership of the German army. (Hitler, Himmler and Goebbels had all committed suicide before
the trials.)
The prosecution lawyers of the four Allies presented 2360 documents and questioned 240
witnesses for the prosecution. The sessions stretched over 218 days. The necessity to translate all
the procedures into the different languages represented only one of the many difficulties of the
trials. It became clear that it would be impossible to conduct such trials against the mass of the
party members somehow involved in crimes.
All in all, 12 leaders were sentenced to death, of whom 10 were actually executed. Three life
sentences and four sentences of up to 20 years’ imprisonment were passed on the rest. Only
three people were acquitted: von Papen, Schacht and Fritzsche. The NSDAP with all its
organisations was condemned as criminal and forbidden.
In the following years similar trials were conducted against leading lawyers, doctors and
industrialists at Nuremberg. Thousands of trials were to follow after those infamous cases and
hundreds of death sentences were indeed passed. Yet, it should also be remembered that many
Nazis responsible for war crimes were not brought to trial and were still able to hide their past,
and even able to carry on pursuing their careers.
From their start the Nuremberg Trials were controversial. On the one hand, some have claimed
that the trials did not go far enough, but on the other hand many critics have seen the process as
‘show trials’ or ‘kangaroo courts’ on two counts:
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
That the evidence produced was questionable to prove the legal guilt of particular
individuals in a court.
That the victors’ justice applied to two different sets of morals, as the Allies refused to be
judged by the same international standards of justice with respect to allied war actions, for
example, the use of the atomic bomb by the Americans, the behaviour of the Soviet troops
in Poland and Germany, and the British mass bombing of Dresden.
Nevertheless, despite all the difficulties, the trials succeeded in revealing the cruelties of the Nazi
leaders and bringing them to a kind of justice. Even in Germany, the principle of the trials was
mostly acknowledged and accepted. Rather, it was the broader process of de-Nazification and reeducation which caused upset within Germany.
Court Room 600
today in the
Nuremberg
Palace of Justice
‘’We must make clear to the Germans that the wrong for which their fallen leaders are on trial is
not that they lost the war, but that they started it. And we must not allow ourselves to be drawn
into a trial of the causes of the war, for our position is that no grievances or policies will justify
resort to aggressive war. It is utterly renounced and condemned as an instrument of policy.’’
(Statement on the War Trials Agreement, August 12th 1945)
Robert H. Jackson, U.S. Chief Prosecutor, Nuremberg
‘’The privilege of opening the first trial in history for crimes against the peace of the world imposes
a grave responsibility. The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so
calculated, so malignant, and so devastating, that civilization cannot tolerate their being
ignored, because it cannot survive their being repeated. That four great nations, flushed with
victory and stung with injury, stay the hand of vengeance and voluntarily submit their captive
enemies to the judgment of the law is one of the most significant tributes that Power has ever
paid to Reason.
If we can cultivate in the world the idea that aggressive war-making is the way to the prisoner's
dock rather than the way to honours, we will have accomplished something toward making the
peace more secure.
We must never forget that the record on which we judge these defendants is the record on which
history will judge us tomorrow. To pass these defendants a poisoned chalice is to put it to our own
lips as well.’’
(Opening Address to the International Military Tribunal at the Nuremberg Trials, November 21st
1945)