SECTION 12 – THE HOLOCAUST: AUSCHWITZ

THE HOLOCAUST
WORLD WAR II (1941-1945)

The Nuremberg Trials

(Defendants in the Dock, 1945)

The Official Story

THE NUREMBERG TRIALS
(November 20, 1945 – October 1, 1946)

The Nuremberg trials were a series of military tribunals held after World War II by the Allied forces under international law and the laws of war. The trials were most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, judicial, and economic leadership of Nazi Germany, who planned, carried out, or otherwise participated in the Holocaust and other war crimes. The trials were held in Nuremberg, Germany, and their decisions marked a turning point between classical and contemporary international law.

The first and best known of the trials was that of the major war criminals before the International Military Tribunal (IMT). It was described as “the greatest trial in history” by Sir Norman Birkett, one of the British judges present throughout. Held between 20 November 1945 and 1 October 1946, the Tribunal was given the task of trying 24 of the most important political and military leaders of the Third Reich. Primarily treated here is the first trial, conducted by the International Military Tribunal. Further trials of lesser war criminals were conducted under Control Council Law No. 10 at the U.S. Nuremberg Military Tribunal (NMT), which included the Doctors’ trial and the Judges’ Trial.

The categorization of the crimes and the constitution of the court represented a juridical advance that would be followed afterward by the United Nations for the development of an international jurisprudence in matters of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and wars of aggression, and led to the creation of the International Criminal Court. For the first time in international law, the Nuremberg indictments also mention genocide (count three, war crimes: “the extermination of racial and national groups, against the civilian populations of certain occupied territories to destroy particular races and classes of people and national, racial, or religious groups, particularly Jews, Poles, and Gypsies and others.”)

The trial

The International Military Tribunal was opened on 19 November 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 seven organizations – the leadership of the Nazi party, the Reich Cabinet, the Schutzstaffel (SS), Sicherheitsdienst (SD), the Gestapo, the Sturmabteilung (SA) and the “General Staff and High Command”, comprising several categories of senior military officers. These organizations were to be declared “criminal” if found guilty.

The indictments were for:

Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of a crime against peace

Planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression and other crimes against peace

Participating in war crimes

Crimes against humanity

Executions

The death sentences were carried out on 16 October 1946 by hanging using the standard drop method instead of long drop. The U.S. Army denied claims that the drop length was too short, which may cause the condemned to die slowly from strangulation instead of quickly from a broken neck, but evidence remains that some of the condemned men choked in agony for 14 to 28 minutes. The executioner was John C. Woods. The executions took place in the gymnasium of the court building (demolished in 1983).

Although the rumor has long persisted that the bodies were taken to Dachau and burned there, they were incinerated in a crematorium in Munich, and the ashes scattered over the river Isar. The French judges suggested that the military condemned (Göring, Keitel, and Jodl) be shot by a firing squad, as is standard for military courts-martial, but this was opposed by Biddle and the Soviet judges, who argued that the military officers had violated their military ethos and were not worthy of the more dignified death by shooting. The prisoners sentenced to incarceration were transferred to Spandau Prison in 1947.

Of the 12 defendants sentenced to death by hanging, two were not hanged: Martin Bormann was convicted in absentia (he had, unknown to the Allies, died while trying to escape from Berlin in May 1945), and Hermann Göring committed suicide the night before the execution. The remaining 10 defendants sentenced to death were hanged.

Nuremberg Principles

The definition of what constitutes a war crime is described by the Nuremberg principles, a set of guidelines which were created by the International Law Commission of the United Nations as a result of the trial.

Principle I

Any person who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefor and liable to punishment.

Principle II

The fact that internal law does not impose a penalty for an act which constitutes a crime under international law does not relieve the person who committed the act from responsibility under international law.

Principle III

The fact that a person who committed an act which constitutes a crime under international law, acted as Head of State or responsible government official, does not relieve him from responsibility under international law.

Principle IV

The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.

Principle V

Any person charged with a crime under international law has the right to a fair trial on the facts and law.

Principle VI

The crimes hereinafter set out are punishable as crimes under international law:

(a) Crimes against peace:

Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances;

Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i).

(b) War crimes:

Violations of the laws or customs of war which include, but are not limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation to slave labor or for any other purpose of civilian population of or in occupied territory; murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war or persons on the Seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity.

(c) Crimes against humanity:

Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhumane acts done against any civilian population, or persecutions on political, racial, or religious grounds, when such acts are done or such persecutions are carried on in execution of or in connection with any crime against peace or any war crime.

Leaders, organizers, instigators and accomplices participating in the formulation or execution of a common plan or conspiracy to commit any of the foregoing crimes are responsible for all acts performed by any persons in execution of such plan.

Principle VII

Complicity in the commission of a crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime against humanity as set forth in Principle VI is a crime under international law.

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 the future trials involving human subjects, a set of research ethics principles for human experimentation.

Source: Wikipedia